


Oasis Reverie

by gyunikum



Category: Dunkirk (2017)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Desert, Fantasy, Hallucinations, Implied Alex/Tommy, M/M, Original Character(s), Swearing, i feel like the desert needs its own tag at this point, implied period-typical homophobia
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-11
Updated: 2018-02-11
Packaged: 2019-01-16 00:52:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 27,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12332202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gyunikum/pseuds/gyunikum
Summary: In the desert, there is a chance that everything is just a mirage.Collins hates the desert.Or alternatively; Collins is stranded in the desert, and he has to team up with the enemy to survive. The question is not whether he escapes the desert, but how.





	1. Act I - The Oasis and the Kittyhawk

**Author's Note:**

> the desert au that nobody wanted. this fic is more collins-centric, because even tho i tagged farrier/collins, there won't be much of farrier. sorry. idek what other tags to use. this whole fic is just. a big wtf. also there's a slight sexual part in this chapter.

Act I - The Oasis and the Kittyhawk

 

_'Sing in me, Muse, and through me, tell the story […] the wanderer, harried for years on end.’_

 

October, 1946. London, England.

 

Steam rises from pipes into the chilly evening as light rain drizzles onto hats and umbrellas. Shoes of late night wanderers scrape and click on the wet cobblestone leisurely, no longer in hurry to the closest bunker entrance. A disembodied, drunk voice slurs a song with an unrecognizable dialect somewhere behind a chipped brick corner, hidden away like a shadow that only moves when not in sight. The sparse traffic on the otherwise busy road just a block away seems like another world as Collins walks through the narrow, crooked alleyway, towers of brick residences rising high into the dark sky, like turrets of a castle; this a tiny kingdom in the heart of London.

The sign above the door squeaks as a cold gust sweeps through the alley, golden letters of the pub’s name caught in the warm glow coming from inside. Collins enters the pub quickly, eager to escape the grasp of wintery evening that has begun to seep into his bones.

Inside, smoke hangs below the ceiling like heavy clouds, and there’s a distinct smell of exhaustion after a long, busy day, now reduced to almost-emptiness of a few customers leaning over empty pints, huddled in corners. Each a story of their own, in which Collins is but a stranger in the corner of their eyes whom they will never see again after tonight. A scene in a motion picture in which they are their own protagonists, each a different plot, a different ending.

Collins wonders, for a distracted moment, if there exists a word for this feeling in the English language— the revelation that each person in the world has their own stories; if there is a word to describe the moment of discovery that takes hold of Collins after he realizes that he has ended so many of these stories with his own two hands he cannot even begin to count, the thought too big for such a night.

After all, just like everyone else, Collins, too, has a story to tell.

“What can I get you, love?” asks Barbara behind the bar, a chipper lady, kind of like the Mary Poppins of lost men who would rather get drunk twice than to go home to their rationed life. Again, like many times before, she eyes him with curiosity, but with a sense of knowledge only a seasoned barkeep can possess— she’s heard many stories in her life, pub a house of mingled stories told and listened to, and she has made up her own tale about the scar on the side of Collins’ face the first time he walked in. She never asks about it, and Collins is grateful for her silence.

“Do you have Guinness?” Collins looks at the empty shelves behind the woman.

“Saved a pint just for you,” she says with a guarded smile. Collins, too, has his own story about Barbara, based around the sorrow look in her eyes with which she looks at young lads like him with the touch of war visible on them, dented shells full of painful memories. Perhaps her son has died in a muddy trench, or on the beaches of Normandy. Collins never asks about it.

“Make it two half pints,” he says. His wallet, gaunt, though holds few rationing coupons and even less pounds, weighs heavy in his hands when he tucks back the corner of a hidden photograph before Barbara can notice it.

“When are you going back?” Barbara asks, slowly filling the first pint. The beer trickles, almost drop by drop, painful to watch.

“Tomorrow.” With Barbara, it has always been easy to overshare. Maybe it’s got to do with her motherly smile. “I want to catch the earliest train. Hopefully I’ll make it home by the evening.”

“Countryside’s what you expected it to be, aye?” She chuckles to herself. “Some people are just not cut out for the big city life.”

Collins hums. He mouths a voiceless _thank you_ in Barbara’s direction as he grabs the two pint glasses. He sets them on a table far from the other regulars, with a clear view to the entrance so he can stay on guard and prepare. He sits facing the door and shrugs out of his wet coat, draping it over the chair next to his seat in a neat fold. He pats along the pockets until he finds a crumpled pack of cigarettes in the right side where he always puts it, and a box of matches with a few sticks clattering inside— the only abundance a person in this country can come across nowadays: fags to smoke and lives lost.

He doesn’t touch the beer, not yet, not until the doorknob finally turns after ten eternally long minutes, and the entrance creaks open, an expected shape stepping inside, carrying along the coldness of October— yet another story.

But this one’s here to listen to Collins’ own story.

 

 

_‘And empty words are evil.’_

 

 

November, 1942. Egypt.

 

Somewhere above the Western Desert, Collins chases Farrier’s Spitfire. Below them a sea of sand rages forth within mountainous waves and dunes that appear as though they are frozen in a single moment, but then they ripple in a blink of an eye; a yellow tempest no one can ever hope to tame.

God, how much Collins hates the fucking desert.

It burns, and it’s dry and hot, and grills Collins inside the cockpit like a piece of meat, and that fucking sand, it gets everywhere, fucks up the gauges and mixes with the gasoline just to clog the engine completely— it gets inside Collins’ boots, under his flight cap, even inside his knickers, and then when he’s back at the base he’s left scraping it out of his arsehole unless he wants to shit sandcastles.

Fuck the desert. Fuck the DAF. Fuck the Afrika Korps and the Axis, and fuck Hitler, and the whole fucking world.

Fuck Farrier.

Collins chases a Spitfire. His own Kittyhawk is left spluttering at twenty thousand feet up while the Spitfire ascends higher where Collins can’t follow anymore, towards the sun to hide between white clouds, like a real Kraut.

 _“Best of luck, Collins,”_ says Farrier.

 _“Domino Two, what the hell are you doing?”_ asks his wingmate, a pilot whose name Collins never bothered to memorize, useless, they are all going to die anyway, and Collins would rather remember battle plans, and vectors and angles, and how much time he has to get the fuck away when he sees a sand storm. They are all going to end up as rotting corpses in this fucking desert anyway, so what’s the point.

The Spitfire dives down from the direction of the sun, falling from the sky, angled almost vertical to Collins, and opens fire, a rapid burst right through Collins’ wings, just missing his cockpit, and the Spitfire is definitely not Farrier.

Collins chases the stolen plane, but he never presses the trigger because Farrier _might_ be in there, until the other pilot, Domino One, intercepts the enemy, swiftly, passing by Collins too close for comfort. The manoeuvre causes Collins to bank left sharply, the corners of his vision blurring from the pull of Gs.

_“Mission accomplished. Return to base, Domino Two. Over.”_

Disregarding the feet he loses by doing so, Collins orbits the area until he sees the stolen plane crash on a dune and explode into orange flames and black smoke. When he spots no chute, he turns his plane around, and follows Domino One’s distant shape. He hovers his thumb over the trigger, a near unbearable desire urging him to push the button until he runs out of all one thousand four hundred and ten rounds his Kittyhawk carries, but by the time Collins gives in to it, because he hates that nameless son-of-a-bitch, Domino One has already disappeared.

Collins presses the trigger, and all six of his guns get jammed.

By the time he makes it back to the airbase, the wind has picked up, blowing dust everywhere, and there is a sand storm marching towards the landing ground in the far distance, turning the blue sky to brown and yellow. Collins climbs out of his plane, and he trips in something, a string of dizziness, slipping off the wing, right into the fist of the other pilot whose name he still doesn’t know. The punch is so well-served that Collins’ plane gets jealous of it, and gives the next one, metal fuselage reverberating loudly in the first powerful blasts of wind.

“Oi, what’s going on?” asks another pilot nearby as he runs up to them. He grabs the man before he can do more damage in Collins, acting quickly much to Collins’ relief.

“Piss off!” Collins’ wingmate spits, thrashing like a wild bull, but he stands down after he notices more people looking at the scene as they begin to emerge from the tents and hangars to prepare for the storm. He breaks out of the other man’s hold, fixing his uniform, and looks down at Collins, face twisted with rage. “He wouldn’t shoot that Nazi fucker, just kept chasing ‘im. Woulda merrily let that bastard go back to his friends with our Spitfire.”

Collins staggers and almost falls flat on his face as he tries to get to his knees. “My guns got jammed, you prick,” he spits at the other pilot’s feet. Someone yanks Collins out of the way as his wingmate kicks a leg towards him.

“Knock it off!” someone yells.

Farrier, dressed in a mechanic’s khakis, leans over Collins with a worried face. “You okay mate? How many fingers am I holding?”

“Uh,” Collins groans, eyes wide as a saucer and brows drawn together as he focuses on the four-armed man above him, “fifteen?”

“Fuck,” Farrier says, just out of Collins’ sight. “Let’s get him inside. He might have gotten a heatstroke in there.”

Mechanic-Farrier pulls Collins up, and another Farrier with an American accent takes to Collins’ left side as they head for a building. Other people hurry down the short landing strip to cover the planes left outside to protect them from the impeding sand storm.

When Collins is ushered inside the infirmary on site, a medic-Farrier pushes Collins onto an empty bed and administers some clear-looking liquid, saline solution or gin, Collins is not sure, but he wouldn’t mind if it was gin, because that’s what Farrier always – rarely – had when things got royally fucked up, and this— this is definitely royally fucked up.

Collins dreams of flying between tall sand pillars in the desert, but the desert below him moves like the ocean, the Channel, rippling dunes, the towers of sand are waterjets from dropped bombs, each a ship sunk, and his Spitfire has gotten hit, and Farrier’s fuel gauge is broken, and the waters are not calm, not calm at all, yet after Farrier tells him to bail out Collins says:

_“The swell looks good, I’m ditching.”_

The nose of his plane punches through the peak of a dune before he hits sand, and freedom is just an arm’s reach from him, but the canopy is jammed, and sand rushes in through the small cracks like water filling the cockpit, and Collins drowns in the desert, lungs filled with grains of sand like an hourglass that counts towards his death.

When he wakes, Farrier is gone, and the medic, Morris, asks Collins if he’s feeling okay because Group Captain Flint wants to hear the report of yesterday’s _accident_ straight from Collins, he’s already listened to Williams’ version – whoever the bloody hell Williams is – and the guy gets to keep his position as wing leader because even though he didn’t notice the signs of Collins’ heatstroke in time, he still managed to keep one of the two remaining Spitfires out of Axis hands. Because apparently, an aircraft is worth more to the DAF than an ace pilot with seven kills under his belt.

Well, fuck the DAF.

As for Collins—

“You will take that pile of scrap to these coordinates. Thanks to your little accident, we’re down one and a half aircrafts,” Flint says. He’s looking out the window, watching as the sandstorm wipes through the airbase. A _khamsin,_ perhaps, Collins thinks, with the way he sweats, he wishes it was— he wishes it would blow them away from this unwelcoming place, blow the war back to Europe. Nobody can tame the desert.

Everything is shades of brown outside. The wind tears a stray cover past the window. A plane is going to be filled with sand now, and a poor lad is going to have to shovel it all out once the storm is over— it’s something Collins had gone through before and would never want to repeat.

“Unfortunately, we don’t have any spare parts here to make your aircraft fit for battle.”

Collins stands quietly on the other side of the desk, waiting for further instructions. He’s feeling a lot better, the last of the heatstroke from hours before having already left his body by the time he stepped out the infirmary. He doesn’t remember much of what happened in between the Jerry somehow sneaking in to steal McFarlane’s kite right from under their noses and the moment Collins’ feet touched the tarmac back at base. His report is similarly full of gaps. He saw it fit not to mention Farrier’s presence— a free ticket back to the field hospital in downtown Aswan which Collins would also rather never repeat.

“You will be going to Landing Ground 120,” Flint turns around promptly, pokes his finger on a map laid out on the desk. Collins glances there, drawing his eyebrows close. He leans in to make sure he’s gotten the location right. His eyes jump back to this current coordinates, grid and markers barely visible.

“Sir,” Collins says, wondering if he’s allowed to make any comments on his mission in the current situation, “that’s almost six hundred miles from here.” A statement. _Are you gone mad?_ A question Collins asks. Flint hears it, the way he narrows his deep-set eyes.

“There’s an LG near Dakhla Oasis should you see the need for an additional check-up,” the man says, pursing his lips into a scowl. Collins inhales sharply, not daring to release his breath. “The boys will patch her up sufficiently before you leave— hopefully, you won’t run into any sandstorms.”

Collins looks back at the map, eyes skipping between the current airbase near Aswan and his destination along the edge of the Great Sand Sea— there’s the merciless desert in between, with no way of knowing if he will be flying straight into a storm.

“They’ve got proper equipment over there, so you go get the plane fixed, and head straight for Malta.”

“Malta?” Collins blurts out, not forgetting to quip a respectful enough _sir_ after it. He’s still at the mercy of his superior here, after his failure— even though he is not the one to blame, not really, but it’s easier to put the blame on him rather than the heat and the sun that drives nearly everyone to insanity. Or maybe they could just blame McFarlane for leaving his kite open for any visitors, or the guards for snoozing while on duty. Or just blame fucking Hitler for going to war against the world.

“Yes, Malta,” Flint repeats, as though exasperated. He supplies Collins with a brief explanation. “The enemy is expected to carry out an air strike there any day, but we are severely understaffed as of right now. The aircraft carriers London has promised are late— but the Germans and the Italians won’t be.”

Collins glances out the window for a moment. This has got to be one big joke, he thinks as he listens to Flint.

“After Siwa Oasis, you will stop for refuel at Benghazi before continuing to Luqa,” Flint points at the two locations with the tip of his pencil. Collins copies them on his own, smaller map, mind already on the task of setting the course of his route. “We’ve just recently re-captured Benghazi, so you might have to use one of the emergency landing grounds nearby. You will know when you get there.”

 _How reassuring._ “Understood, sir,” Collins says, snapping his back straight.

“Any questions?” Flint asks, turning back towards the window. Collins doesn’t know what the other man finds so interesting outside, as the visuals are close to zero in the brown mist, but he sure as hell won’t be wasting his one question on this. Sandstorms are the bane of the DAF’s job, so— fuck sandstorms too.

“Sir,” Collins clears his throat, shifting weight to his other leg. “Am I being transferred because of—”

The captain lets out a laugh, loud and forced. “No, son. This is your official mission,” he says, as though a threat. “Your expertise is needed somewhere else. You should be grateful for your opportunity to get out of this hellhole.”

“Official mission, sir?” Collins echoes, second part of Flint’s reply falling to deaf ears.

“Yes. You will also carry out an unofficial mission,” Flint clasps his hands behind his back, puffing out his chest. The only thing bigger on the continent of Africa than the Sahara is probably Flint’s ego. Collins wonders how the other man can fit his face through a door. “Your objective is to deliver an important document to Luqa, which will be handed over to you at Siwa Oasis by a British agent. The area is under German surveillance currently, thus halting the agent’s progress. LG 120 doesn’t have the proper manpower.”

Collins listens for a moment, then decides against staying silent. “Permission to speak, sir.”

“Granted,” Flint says, reaching up to his temple to massage his forehead as though dealing with Collins was giving him an unbearable headache. Mutual feelings, Collins thinks, the base of his skull throbbing with dull pain. He tries to keep the sarcasm out of his tone.

“If that document is so important, why not send an escort of multiple aircrafts with working machine guns?”

“Because,” Flint speaks up without waiting a beat, “ _son_ , this is a covert mission. The Germans know we use LG 120 mainly for reparations— do you suppose they would not find it strange if a section of undamaged aircrafts made a short stop there?”

Collins thinks; “They could just refuel,” he replies simply. It makes the most sense, to him, at least, because it seems whoever came up with this foolish idea wanted, perhaps, the most complicated solution to a mind-numbingly simple problem.

Or maybe this is exactly why Collins is still only a flying officer, maybe he just can’t see the bigger picture there— his knowledge in tactics are limited to that of only the advantages and disadvantages of various flying formations and manoeuvres in dogfights against Luftwaffe habits. He’s just a strain of muscle inside the body that is the DAF.

“They know we don’t have air routes anywhere near Siwa where refuelling would be necessary.” Flint looks at his watch with a sense of finality. “You’ll be expected to depart in two hours, so I suggest you start your preparations now. Any questions? No? Splendid. You’re dismissed.”

Collins salutes, and leaves with a quiet, but deliberate _sir_ after scooping up a copy of the RAF transport command handbook that Flint had tossed onto the desk when Collins arrived— a newer edition, it seems by its cover. Maybe they finally added something useful for the event of a crash-landing in the desert this time. Or a crossword to kill time while waiting for rescue.

Oh, how Collins misses crosswords.

“So?” asks Smith, springing up from his cot the moment Collins enters their room. For a second, Collins thinks about how very much he would hate to be in the shoes of those in the tents outside, but then Smith is asking another question: “Got your ears chewed off by good ole Flint?”

Collins shuffles to his trunk and props the lid open— pack only the essentials, ones that he won’t get another pair of once at Malta. The first thing that comes to Collins’ mind is a tattered copy of _The Odyssey of Homer_ in T.E. Shaw’s translation _,_ with an ink of neat cursive on the second page, declaring in bold tone: _‘possession of R.A. Farrier’._ It had gotten Collins quite a few curious glances at first, but the others quickly learnt to write it off as one of his quirks.

Sometimes Collins imagines getting lost in the sky on his way home to wander the sea of desert for ten years. Sometimes he imagines how the world will have changed by then. Perhaps he would be the one changing. Perhaps he’s already changed.

“Oi,” Smith tries again, nudging Collins’ shoulder with his foot. Collins lifts his head, hands in the middle of shoving his shaving kit in a rucksack, and Smith’s expression contorts with concern. “Did he remove you?” he asks, sounding half-convinced of Collins’ departure.

Collins thinks of a lie. “Transferred,” he says. Half-truth. “To Malta. It appears my Scot blood can’t handle this heat. Can’t risk another heatstroke.”

The reply catches the attention of Wissler, secretly eavesdropping in on their conversation, and he jumps to his feet in a flurry of cheers, as though the news of his mate leaving the desert for a place to north was the only news he was looking forward to— no doubt him, and soon the others will live the thought of leaving the desert vicariously through Collins’ fate. A strange bond that threads them together in moments like this.

Not quite the bond Collins has— _had_ with Farrier.

“You lucky bastard,” Wissler whoops, locking Collins’ neck in a one-armed hug. “Can you imagine— _running water_.”

“And no bloody sandstorms,” Elliott quips in, watching from the window as the storm subsides, now but a yellow drizzle. The landing strips are completely gone, tops of almost buried tents peeking out from hills of sand.

“ _Water_ ,” Wissler repeats, glancing at Elliott before turning back to Collins. “Maybe even ice. Man, I wish I’d been in your place.”

Collins scoffs. “It wasn’t very pleasant. I didn’t even know where I was.” He remembers only fragments.

He remembers Farrier above the desert-Channel. Sea-sand. Blue, one in its colour, the other in its nickname.

“That is certain,” Elliott says. The others watch him closely as he swings his legs off the desk where he’s been sitting next to the window. He leans against the bunk bed he shares with no-one.

“What do you mean?” Smith asks, saving Collins from voicing his curiosity. Somehow it would drive further the fact that he was completely out of it while _flying_ , while _engaging_ the _enemy_. Not a great way to nurture his reputation.

“I had a little chat with Williams. Said you were talking weird stuff over the radio,” Elliott says. “At one point you asked him if he still had any fuel left— then you claimed you saw a Heinkel in the distance with two bf 190 escorts.”

Collins pursues his lips. He tosses his last pack of fags into his bag before closing it. Even with his water canister, it’s only half-full. A sad sight, his only possessions. It’s as though he was a nomad, living on not horseback – or camels – but in an aeroplane.

The thought of exploring the world in the air like a sky-nomad excites Collins, but only for a moment. Then someone shifts in empty silence the howling wind and Elliott’s words have left behind, and Collins is back in the present, three pairs of eyes scrutinizing every little movement of his expression as though trying to read him— as though he had some sort of secret the others needed to reveal in order to live. Water for fish.

“That’s what a heatstroke is,” Collins says, tone intended to put an end to this interrogation-turned-conversation. “I don’t recommend it.”

“You called him _Farrier_ ,” Elliott adds, and Collins stops mid-step. He swallows, trying to come up with another lie— nobody around him knows, nobody around him should know about Farrier.

Only Collins is allowed to remember Farrier— he wants the other man’s memory all to himself, because that’s all he’s got left of Farrier. That, and a photo.

His quick thinking in the air fails him on the ground.

“Who’s Farrier?” Wissler asks before Collins can open his mouth, almost as curious as a child. His expression doesn’t belong to the Air Force, doesn’t belong to the war. Collins ignores the thought of all the time he’s wondered when Wissler would die— along with the others. It’s a habit, to count the days back, only to reset the countdown when someone in their squadron doesn’t return.

Losing his mates doesn’t hurt as much like that. Nothing would hurt as much as losing Farrier.

“Nobody,” Collins snaps, betraying his little private mission to keep everything to himself. “As I said before, I was completely out of it. End of story.”

Elliott raises his hands in defence and steps back, unconvinced. Wissler looks disappointed. Smith lets Collins go with a look of concern.

Afternoon settles around Aswan slower than usual, sky an interesting concoction of soft blue and fiery orange around the burning sun. The landing strip has been shovelled off, airbase back to how it looked right before the storm, tents re-erected and aircrafts cleaned. A small part of Collins feels like a king whose subjects prepare to send off their ruler for a long crusade.

“Is Flint expecting you to pull off a night landing? Tough luck,” Smith greets Collins as the pilot walks into the hangar, manual opened in his hands.

“Nothing I haven’t done,” Collins shrugs. “Pack extra water, will you?”

“That’s extra weight for you,” Smith counters almost immediately. He looks at Collins with a mixture of awe and curiosity— there it is again, like every damn person stationed on this base, trying to read Collins. Like he was a book. A story for the pals to talk about when on stand-by.

“Toss out the chute. Without water I’m as good as dead in the desert.”

“You could use the chute for a lot of things if you go down, you know,” Smith says, tapping the RAF manual with his index finger. “Or haven’t you read?”

“Oh, I have,” Collins scoffs with humour, and slaps the book closed, then waves it in front of Smith’s face. “I can use it to start fire, for example.” He wants to add that if he ever goes down before he reaches his destination, he won’t be getting any rescue.

If the document is so damn important, they’ll just send another runner. Collins is only playing delivery boy because it’s convenient. In the wrong place at the wrong time.

“You know,” Smith speaks up as they stand side by side, looking at the P-40 as though they were looking at a painting in a museum. “Your kitty needs to see the dentist,” he nods at the chipped paint on the nose of the Kittyhawk, white fangs broken from bullets that have grazed the fuselage.

“Aye,” Collins agrees. “Hope I’ll find a proper one at Malta.”

Smith shakes his head, letting out a light chuckle, and leaves to fetch more water without another word. Collins rounds accumulator connected to the single Packard engine buzzing with electricity— all he knows about Packard engines is that they are weaker than the Merlin engines found in Spitfires, but also heavier; lucky for him. He climbs up the wing with ease, pulling back the canopy. He drops his bag on the seat and reaches for the one that contains the parachute wedged behind it.

“What are you doing?” the mechanic preparing Collins’ plane asks from below, looking up at Collins, but the only reply he gets is the bag of chute thumping dully on the floor next to his feet. “Are you mad?”

“I need more space,” Collins says simply, placing his bag where the chute was supposed to be. “The wings okay?”

The armourer stares at Collins as if he’s grown another head, assesses him, and then sighs, giving up whatever argument he was ready to throw at Collins. “They won’t be a problem.”

Collins gives a curt nod, and settles into the cockpit comfortably, hands reaching forward to check the switches on instinct, nothing but muscle memory. He combs through his hair one last time before pulling on his flight cap. A few moments later, Smith pops up in the corner of his eye, pulling himself onto the wing. He tucks another water canister and a box of crackers in Collins’ bag without a word, then reaches into his pocket and fishes out a lighter.

“Don’t need it,” Collins says without leaving Smith any time to explain.

“Yes, you do,” Smith retorts, and slips it into the rucksack as well. “But you better give it back when we meet again.”

Collins opens his mouth, wondering what to say. “And if we don’t?”

“Then just use it for your cigars.”

Collins closes his eyes and shakes his head with a deep sigh. He lets Smith arrange his oxygen mask and the hose, ending the final check-up with a tug at Collins’ mae west for good measure. Collins buckles the belt himself.

He turns to look at Smith chewing on his thumb. “Taxi me out?”

Smith purses his lips in agreement, nods, and turns away to call for the crewman. Collins waits for the signal, then flips the switch to start the engine. The Kittyhawk roars to life, howl echoing into the day, a threat to all predators out in the desert should they get in her way. The sound fills Collins’ heart with courage that he only pretends to have when he doesn’t sit in an aeroplane.

Collins feels strangely naked without any of the machine guns working. He knows he will be flying in mostly Allied airspace, but there is always the possibility of being jumped by stray Italian or German groups. He will be defenceless, save for the Kittyhawk’s agility at low-altitude. Now, that will be something he hasn’t done yet, but as they say— there is always a first time.

Hopefully, it will not be his last as well.

Smith, sitting on the wing on Collins’ starboard, motions for Collins the get-go, and they roll out the hangar swiftly, like they’ve done a thousand times before. With the nose of the plane obscuring most of his view, Collins allows himself to be completely dependent on Smith’s hand signals to veer the plane in the right direction.

He imagines Farrier in Smith’s place. _‘Leave it to me,’_ he would say, and Collins would be able to take-off with his eyes closed. Farrier, on the other hand, would probably go mad if he had to fly a P-40, its angle and long nose nothing but an obstacle— _‘who even designed this,’_ he would ask and never walk anywhere near a Curtiss plane. They are inferior at higher altitudes where Messerschmitts and Spitfires are at the most ease, and flying low was never Farrier’s style. But he would adapt, just like Collins has had to.

Collins thought he could control the desert, bend it to his will, but now, he limps back home in defeat.

Like a last supper, without food and eating involved, Smith sees Collins off, and Collins regrets, a hundred times in the span of the few minutes it takes them to roll onto the runway, to have let Smith become his friend— chances there are, they will never see each other again. He wants to give the lighter back, but he knows it’s a gesture of hope, not for Collins but for Smith— a part of him has escaped the desert.

Maybe Collins should have given Farrier something, too.

Collins flies towards the white Sun, leaving the slowly darkening sky behind him, and Aswan, and his squadron with whom he’s survived in the desert for long months. He checks in with the control tower at the airbase one last time before he goes radio silent.

Not wanting to risk landing at night with the way his plane is, Collins passes Dakhla without stopping, and he reaches LG 120 in a leisurely two hours, announcing his arrival through his radio as soon as the local flight control picks up his frequency, just when the afternoon begins to seep into dusk, orange sun lying down on the horizon in sizzling waves of heat.

His Kittyhawk shudders and groans loudly as he touches down on the rocky landing strip, propeller fanning finer sand right towards the cockpit until he gets near one of the two hangars that make up LG 120. Inside their bellies, Collins sees only dismantled aircrafts in such states of disrepair that almost hurts Collins to look at, resembling more of crashed wreckages than properly working aeroplanes. As the dust settles down, Collins slides back the canopy, and greets the mechanic jogging up to him.

“F/O Collins from Aswan, right?” the crewman asks, shaking Collins’ hand briefly. “I’m Fisher, chief engineer.”

“That’s me,” Collins says, moving to climb out. “Do you want my serial number and all that jazz, or can you get to work on my kite right away?” He swings the strap of his bag over his shoulder and hops off the wing right after Fisher.

“Of course. Guns— M2 Browning machine guns, right?” Fisher bends forward to look under the wings, examining the visible parts of the weaponry. Collins has no idea how a diagnosis like this is possible, but he leaves it to Fisher to take care of his Kittyhawk.

“All six of ‘em. And a full tank. When will she be ready?” He hands a stick of cigarette to Fisher.

“Should be around six tomorrow,” Fisher says after a moment of calculation, tapping the smoke into his breast pocket discreetly. Collins hoists his bag, mind on a thousand and one other things already.

“Five hundred sharp, and on the runway for take-off.”

“That’s going to cost you more than just a fag, mate.” Collins scoffs with a shake of his head, but reaches into his pocket and pulls out two more cigarettes. He barely arrived to the first stage of his mission ten minutes ago, but he is already down three fags. Just his luck.

“Can’t be too greedy out here in the desert, eh?” Collins notes, and Fisher just spreads his arms wide with a grin, knowing better than to continue the dead conversation. With nothing else to settle in the hangar, Collins leaves for the building adjacent to it in hopes of finding the person in charge of the landing ground, and someone who can direct him to wherever he is supposed to find the British agent.

LG 120 is situated nearabout the oasis, approximately fifteen minutes of walking distance, and less than five minutes with a vehicle had the overseer of the base given Collins a ride instead of just a piece of paper with a coded message of a place and time that even his niece could break.

Even from above the oasis appeared large, a massive lake and an expansive forest so big, Collins has never thought there could be so much green in the desert. An eroded mud-brick fortress in the middle of the town of Shali stands guard on an inselberg, sticking out like a sore thumb, embraced by trees and homes. Some bear small signs of an insignificant battle between Allied and Axis forces.

Wandering the streets, the local Berber stop and stare at Collins, few loathsome, but mostly just curious— a small group of children runs up to him, laughing as they close him in a circle. They talk to him over each other, some holding their palms up to him as if asking for gifts, and as difficult as it is to resist their hopeful glances, all Collins can do is smile and pat their heads before they break off, sending him off with arms flailing in the air. Collins looks back at them once, not knowing how he should feel. He wishes they’d never taken the fight to such a beautiful place.

The sky has already turned dark when he finds the establishment on the note, a meagre coffeehouse of tables made from the same material as the walls, covered with tapestry and colourful decorations. The moment Collins steps in, he recognizes the agent even in the poor lighting of the place, candle on the table illuminating his tanned face.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Collins says as he settles down across the table. “Fancy seeing you here, Alex.”

Alex scoffs, the familiar frown on his face enough to subside Collins’ sudden homesickness. “Feeling’s mutual.”

“What are you doing here?” Collins blurts out, unable to believe his own eyes yet. Alex pours him coffee, orange glow of the candle reflecting off the silverware. The thought of the desert is pushed into the back of Collins’ mind, despite the aridness of the air, and the sweat from spending so much time out in the sun gluing his shirt to his skin. He’d love to take a dip in one of those pools of water he’s seen around the town, has even considered a quick splash when he passed a bathhouse.

“I was about to ask the same,” Alex retorts, then takes a sip of his coffee. Collins follows his example, and closes his eyes as the hot beverage relaxes him immediately. He’s a hair’s breadth from going into raptures about it, the watered down version they give them in the DAF coming nowhere close to this.

Alex looks at Collins with an all knowing grin.

“Christ, I needed this,” Collins exhales in relief. He braces his elbows on the table, leaning forward as exhaustion finally catches up to him. It hasn’t been more than six hours since he woke up in the infirmary in Aswan after spending his late morning chasing around a stolen Spitfire, but it’s as though the two hours he spent knocked out didn’t count as a rest at all.

“Feels even better than a bath, innit?” Alex says, finishing his own cup. After a few minutes, he stretches with a muffled groan. “Let’s go.”

Collins looks up as Alex springs to his feet, resisting the urge to snap at the younger man. Instead, he quietly gathers his bearings and follows after Alex outside to the dark streets. They start in another direction, walking quietly and turning corners until Collins gives up trying to keep track of their route. Alex strides with confidence, movements like he’s been living in Shali for months, years even, rather than just a castaway wandering around for the past few days, waiting to be relieved of his task.

On their way to their destination, they barely see anyone out in the night, perhaps an after-effect of the past fights for the town until it had lost its strategic importance, though Collins does notice two local boys walking side by side, shoulders brushing, no space left between them unlike between Collins and Alex.

When they finally arrive at a mud-brick house, identical to all the other ones around them, Alex turns to Collins before undoing the latch on the door. “Some locals work for the enemy.”

“Figured,” Collins says, having understood Alex’s intentions right after the second sudden turn where he had to grab Collins’ shirt to steer him into the pitch-black alleyway. They couldn’t risk being followed, though the reason why Alex had deemed it safe enough for them to meet in the coffeehouse is still beyond Collins.

Inside the sparsely furnished lodging, Alex lights an oil lamp at his desk, and crouches down to crawl underneath it. Collins looks around the single room, searching for a clue that he could hold onto for such a coincidental meeting. Something that would give Collins more satisfying answers than Alex.

“I suppose the RAF didn’t work out for you, then,” Collins speaks up casually to break the silence. He sits down on the edge of a mattress tossed into the corner, watching Alex work diligently on the underside of the desk. At Collins’ statement, Alex stops for a moment and peeks at the pilot over his shoulder.

“Should have never let you convince me,” Alex scoffs, but Collins catches the grin on his face as he goes back to his task. “It’s a long story, but let me just say it involved me getting shot down above France, and then talking my way out of the clutches of an SS _gruppe_. When I got back to London— on my own, might I add – my C/O was so impressed that I was sent on a retcon mission within days. It was a suicide.”

Just after Alex finishes, a wooden panel cracks loudly into the following silence. The four walls absorb that as well, leaving only the rugged breathing that comes from Alex’s way, and the sound of blood rushing in Collins’ ears.

“What happened?” Collins asks curiously, the last time he’s heard about Alex’s whereabouts was when the boy had just gotten through the crash course for new pilots, before Collins was sent to North Africa to join the DAF’s campaign. In the desert, Alex was the last thing on Collins’ mind.

“I survived, obviously,” Alex says, focusing on picking the desk apart as he tosses another piece of wood to the centre of the room. “They wanted to send me to help sabotage a U-boat, but after Dunkirk— I told them I didn’t want to be anywhere near water. So they sent me to the bloody desert. On a bloody aircraft carrier.”

Collins allows himself to let out a laugh, which becomes even louder when Alex grumbles _“very funny”_ under his nose as he returns to the underside of the desk. Not even a minute later, he fishes something out of a hidden compartment inside. He hands a ragged notebook to Collins as he sits down next to him.

“It’s a code book,” he informs, guiding Collins’ gaze with the tip of his finger sliding over the words printed on the cover. “I stole it in Tripoli. Intended to bring it to Malta, but they chased me all the way here.”

“You can’t leave the town?” Collins asks, flipping through pages upon pages of codes used by the Germans. There are multiple marks, hinting at the person from whom Alex had managed to snatch it. No doubt, Collins supposes, in the right hands this book can even prevent the Luftwaffe and Regia Aeronautica from bringing utter devastation to Malta, saving not just the lives of Allied troops, but civilians as well.

Should Collins succeed in his mission, it could give them a much needed edge in their fight against the Afrika Korps.

“Been told to stay put,” Alex shrugs, and doesn’t bother himself with covering his mouth as he yawns loudly. He leans back against the wall, hands tucked behind his head, the stretch of his lean body catching Collins’ attention for a moment too long. To distract himself, he busies himself with the book in his hands, and after a short consideration, he removes the dust jacket of _Odyssey_ and folds it around the similar-sized notebook. “It’s not a bad place I s’pose. I can almost pretend I’m on vacation.”

Collins braces his elbows on his knees and rubs his forehead— he’s never thought how much he actually missed Alex and his ability to talk about everything, but at the same time nothing at all while making whatever he said sound like the most important thing on the world. Sometimes it was a blessing, sometimes a curse. This time, it’s both.

“Food’s great, the coffee is also great,” Alex continues, kicking his boots off with his toes lazily. They thump dully on the rug under the mattress. “The bathhouse not so much, but I get to stare at the pretty boys as much as I want.”

Collins’ breath hitches at Alex’s words, and he hesitates for a few moments, stomaching the hidden message, before he turns his head the slightest bit to show Alex he’s listening. Of course he’s listening— Alex has always had a way to make everyone in a room pay their full attention to him, and only him. Collins feels Alex shift on the cot behind him, suddenly too aware of the space between them.

“This place is like a haven for guys like us.”

 _Guys like us,_ echoes in Collins’ mind. There was a reason he’s never tried to find out whether Alex was alive or not— that way, Collins could pretend that, once again, no one was aware of his secret.

But _guys like them_ have always had to stick together.

“I’d like to come back here once the war is over,” Alex says, sounding almost too hopeful. He keeps quiet for a long moment, as though giving Collins time to brace himself for whatever Alex is going to say next. Then he adds, in the most unceremonious way, like he was commenting on the weather: “bring Tommy with me.”

Collins closes his eyes and allows himself the image of walking down the dusty streets with Farrier on his side, shoulders brushing, close to each other like those local boys, their fingers intertwined, not a worry in their minds of the consequences should someone see them. He imagines watching the sunset with Farrier from the top of the fortress, and he imagines kissing him by the pools, and imagines feeding him dates and figs bought freshly from the bustling bazaar.

He wishes Alex never planted this idea in his mind, the seed now growing into a pine tree that prickles the insides of his head every time he doesn’t focus on this sweet, intoxicating fantasy.

“How’s Tommy?” Collins doesn’t forget to ask. Anything to take his mind off the picture of spending time with Farrier. Time Farrier doesn’t have anymore.

“Alive and well as far as I know,” Alex murmurs, nonchalant of anything he’s taken an interest in. “He’s moved to Buckinghamshire for a new job. After the— you know,” he gently pats his own knee, no need to elaborate. They both still vividly remember the telegram sent to Tommy’s next of kin, his aunt, informing them about his surgery. Collins had never seen the blood rush out of Alex’s face so quickly.

Yet, considering all, Collins would have Farrier with a missing leg and stumbling around, but alive rather than this unbearable uncertainty of his whereabouts which has been following Collins for the past two years, an enigma that he feels as though he will never break on his own, but still could never ask for help.

He hums, and then they sit in the silence for quit minutes, listening to the sounds of night from outside.

“I should go.” He moves to stand up, but Alex fixes him with a stare, enough to get Collins to release the strap of his bag and feel like a whiny child who’s just been scolded. Alex’s condescending glares, that Collins did not miss— rank and age had nothing on Alex when it came to Collins, though he’s rarely wondered when or how the dynamic of power between them shifted to Alex’ favour.

“Sit tight. You’ll just make a target out of yourself.”

Collins reasons, it might be that Alex has had a few days of head-start to make Shali his home ground. Like a proper spy, or whatever occupation it is that had been forced unto Alex.

The Alex trying out for the RAF because he hadn’t wanted to die an infantryman and the Alex now seem worlds away, yet it’s the only titbit of Collins’ homeland here in the merciless desert. He’s been stationed in parts of the Sahara for so long, its golden sands have begun to clog his brain like it gets into a Kittyhawk’s engine, fogging his memories to obscurity.

Collins doesn’t realize the gentle touch on his shoulder until he feels Alex’s fingertip brush against the side of his neck, too high, just below his jaw where it sends a jolt of shiver down his spine.

“You look like you’ve got a stick up your ass,” Alex says humorously, earning a scoff from Collins. With half of his mind still focusing on Alex’s hand that still rests on his shoulder in a friendly gesture, but now a lot closer to his neck, Collins allows himself to relax into the touch. “Don’t worry, we’re safe here.”

Aching for more of the intimacy that the desert has deprived of him, Collins turns to look at Alex, his rugged face bathing in the weak glow of the lamp on the other side of the room, casting long shadows on his cheek.

He feels another brush of finger against his neck, this time less mischievous and more of something else that shows in the way Alex’s gaze flutters to Collins’ mouth before slowly lifting his eyes to look at Collins with the same spark in them that Collins feels in his guts. He lets Alex tighten his grip on his neck and pull him in, the soft pressure of another set of lips on his so unfamiliar for a moment, Collins freezes with his mouth open until Alex’s tongue darts forward with a lingering taste of coffee.

When Collins comes to his senses, he finds himself lying on his back on the mattress with Alex hovering above him, hands braced against the bed on each side of Collins’s head. Alex is about to lean in when he notices Collins staring at him.

“What?” Alex asks, confusion running deep in the creases between his brows. Even deeper shadows. The small flame inside the lamp flickers in the chilly breeze that sweeps in through the open window, breaking the silence.

“What the hell are we doing?” Collins wonders, sounding too out of breath for his liking. He’s not sure if he’s just kissed Alex for this long, or if it’s the confusion that sets a bullet of panic in his chest.

“Blowing off some steam?” Alex wrinkles his forehead in genuine confusion.

“Yes we are, but—” Collins starts, then cuts himself off, not understanding his own mind. His bodily reaction is clear, the touch of Alex’s knee between his legs unparalleled to anything else he’s experienced in the desert, the touch of intimacy of something more than just a hug so foreign that Collins doesn’t know how to behave.

Alex exhales, and after a moment, sits back onto his heels. Collins pushes up his torso to his elbows to look at Alex’s face.

“Look, you’re not cheating on—” Alex stops, “—with this, it’s just— a convenience.”

“A _convenience,_ ” Collins repeats, deadpan.

“It doesn’t mean anything,” Alex explains, as if it was a sentence that Collins needed to be translated to catch its meaning. Oh, Collins gets it, Alex’s intentions clear as daylight, perhaps the only trait to him that Collins – and everyone else who’s had the pleasure of knowing Alex – understands. Everything else, Alex hides under the bushel, into a container of surprises to catch anyone off guard should they possess something Alex has set his eyes on.

A cunning man, Alex is, that Collins knows very well, and for the same reason, he pulls Alex back on top of him by the back of his neck, a strong grip that he tightens even more, pinching Alex’s spine when he gets too ahead of himself by tucking one of his hands deep into Collins’ pants.

“Apologies,” Alex whispers, and the grin on his face is almost menacing, but this is what this fucking desert does to people like them, the sand and the wind picking at their edges until there is nothing left of them but an eroded carcass of their hardened shells, begging to be filled with something momentary. “I forgot you were a romantic guy.”

He presses a kiss so soft on his jaw, Collins nearly allows himself to imagine someone else in Alex’s place.

Collins wants to ask Alex why he’s so eager, even when half of his mind refuses to focus on anything else but the hand stroking his cock, very romantic, but he supposes he already knows the answer to that.

The desert— it’s always the desert.

When he comes, embarrassingly soon, Collins bites down on a name. He stares at the dark orange ceiling as he wanks Alex off with a hand stuck between their bodies as Alex grinds into his grip and his crotch, head buried in the crook of Collins’ neck. He doesn’t bite down, doesn’t suck on his skin, just presses his lips against Collins’ throat and gasps.

Collins wipes the gunk in the mattress, though he’s half-inclined to use Alex’s shirt instead just to spite the other man.

“Fuck,” Alex breathes, his chest pressing against Collins’ as they breathe against each other. He still lays on top of Collins, seemingly not wanting to get off on his own. Collins wriggles out from underneath Alex and sits up on the edge, tucking himself back into his pants. “Either it’s me who can’t remember well, or you’ve wanked others off in my absence— which I do doubt.”

Alex flicks his wrist, making a jerking motion with his hand. When Collins sees it, he’s a hair’s breadth from punching the grin off Alex’s face.

“Fuck off.” Alex laughs, loudly, and slaps his back. Collins lies back on the bed, and closes his eyes, ready to end the weirdest day of his life. He listens to Alex putter about in the room for some time, rejects his offer of a bowl of date, and then scoots over when Alex nudges him to the other end of the bed so he can lie down as well.

In his dream, Collins walks the line along which the ocean and desert meet, on a sandy shore, mountain-ranges of dunes and waves on each side, and beneath the sound of waves crashing onto the beach there is distant rumbling, an orchestra of engines playing the symphony of death as the roar of hell raining down on London worms its way back to the forefront of Collins’ surfacing memories. From above balls of fire and smoke punch through the blanket of heavy clouds, shot down planes hurtling towards the coast within their last flight, and the view, as terrifying as entrancing it is, keeps Collins’ eyes glued to the sky until the ground begins to shake, and as Collins turns around, the last thing he sees are white fangs of a shark ready to consume him.

The next moment he opens his eyes, he’s lying on an eroded cliff made of sand, and white clouds sail on the blue sky like small boats cluttering the Channel. He turns his head, the sight of a lighthouse built on the same cliff some way off catching his attention, and holds it so tightly within its grasp that Collins doesn’t remember making the trek until he’s standing on the concrete porch and knocking on the door. Nobody answers, but Collins enters regardless, because there is something at the top that he needs to know what is— perhaps an answer to a question he’s yet to ask. Perhaps something else.

The wooden stairs creak under his weight, each step a set of trembling knees, and hands braced against the wall, the bottom behind Collins stretching into a dark abyss not unlike the depths of an ocean whose image feeds his worst nightmares still.

On the top floor, instead of the lens and lantern in the middle there is a desk, and a wireless radio, a wooden chair beckoning Collins to take a seat. He turns on the radio after he sits down, and changes between the frequencies until the static turns violent, and— a voice crackles.

 _“You have to go,”_ the person whimpers. Collins doesn’t recognize it, a mesh of different voices distorting each other. _“You can’t stay. Please— just go.”_

“I can’t,” Collins whispers to the radio, hoping to be heard.

_“I didn’t want to leave you.”_

“But you did,” Collins says.

The wind howls. The windows rattle in their sockets. _“I wanted to go back.”_

Collins turns around to see a sand storm coming his way.

“I know.”

 _“You’ve got to go,”_ the voice repeats. The lighthouse trembles, and the earth rumbles as if hidden within the brown veil of storm marched an army against Collins. _“You have to leave, right now.”_

“I can’t,” Collins echoes, and he hears someone say his name as the windows break under the might of the wind, and the sand washes Collins away.

He wakes up to someone shaking his shoulders, hot breath blasting in his face. When his eyes crack open at the discomfort, his vision is filled with Alex’s distressed expression, a drop of sweat clinging to the tip of his nose.

“You have to go, _now_ ,” Alex hisses, and releases Collins with a final shake. As Collins blinks away the sleepiness and confusion, Alex crawls to the other side of the room and peeks over the windowsill to look out. At the click of the Webley revolver in Alex’s hands, Collins is fully awake.

“What’s going on?” Collins asks quietly, crouching down next to Alex as he pulls both straps of his bag over his shoulders. He rubs his eyes. Dawn paints the walls blue all around them, giving hardly enough light for anyone to see into the room from outside.

“Woke up ten minutes ago, went out to wash my face, and almost got shot,” Alex says and tips his head to the side to show Collins the red line where the side of the bullet just barely grazed his skin. Not deep enough to cause bleeding.

“The Germans?”

Alex shakes his head. “Didn’t see. But you have to go. You need to make it out of the town,” he explains quickly and looks around the room, as though searching for something. “The LG is to the east.”

Collins turns his head towards the general direction to where Alex tips his chin. He tries to think of it as navigating in the sky, but it’s hardly an accomplishable feat without a compass and a grid map— the sun is yet to come up as well.

“Have you got another gun?” he looks at the weapon Alex holds pointedly.

“No, and I need this,” Alex says and cocks the gun as if to make a point. Before Collins can retort, he continues. “I’ll distract them. Go through the window— they’ll be expecting us from the entrance.”

Collins bites out a curse at his forgetfulness. He shouldn’t have left his gun with his Kittyhawk despite walking Allied territory. His recent tendency to go everywhere without a weapon might end up getting him killed.

“Get the book to Chief Marshal Park in Luqa. He’ll know what to do with it.” Alex bites his lip as he looks up at the ceiling, preparing himself, and reassures his grip on the pistol.

“Be careful, eh?” Collins says. He takes a deep breath. Alex mumbles something to himself, but before he can dash for the door, Collins grabs his arm. “Alex. I mean it.”

Alex stares deep into his eyes for a second and nods with a quiet _‘you too’_. After Collins finally tells him to go, Alex disappears into the blue-greyness of the still sleeping town with the gun stretched out in front of him in an experienced way that Collins can never hope to mimic. Unlike Alex, his hands have fallen out of habit for a rifle’s grip since basic training, and he never once had the opportunity to fire the handgun issued to him at the beginning of his service.

Perhaps it’s better that Collins is unarmed. None of the Berber locals deserve to walk into the crossfire of a war they have nothing to do with.

Collins waits a beat, listening with his breath held for any gunshots that would give him an idea just what Alex is up to, and peeks out of the open window. When no one fires at him, Collins grabs the edges and vaults over the sill. He lands in a crouch, falling to his knees, and with the same momentum, pushes away from the ground and breaks into a sprint towards the closest cover in the direction Alex has indicated.

He’s a block away from Alex’s place when the first gunshot rings out, prompting Collins to duck behind a wall and stay motionless for a quick second as he catches his breath. Wings of birds flap loudly as the sudden noise disrupts the peace of the town. Only with the sound does the danger of his situation dawn on Collins.

Instead of going back into the open, Collins takes the longer route by sneaking around the block, and climbs over a low wall made of mud-brick into someone’s yard. It would probably take him a lot shorter to get to the LG if he just took to the streets, but he has more than enough reasons against doing so.

The town, however, like a single entity whose favour Collins has won, grants him a lucky passage until he’s scouting ahead to cross the last street from behind the covers of a wooden cart. Across the wide road a line of homes separates him from the open desert between his position and the landing ground less than a mile from the town. A rocky hill obscures his view in the distance, behind which lies his way out.

Just as he’s about to make a dash for the wide gap between two buildings, he notices a flurry of movement in the corner of his eyes, and he reacts in time to duck under the cart, out of the way of a bullet. It hurls splinters of wood into the air, before another one comes, this time ricocheting off the rocky ground just a few inches from Collins’ elbow, marking its impact with a small cloud of dust.

Against his better judgment, Collins makes for the other side instead of retreating behind a nearby wall, hoping, by some mad misconception, that he can outrun a rifle.

“Suck it,” he gasps out as he slams his back against the building on the other side of the street. He doesn’t look back as he catches his breath, and breaks into a jog along the wall until he reaches the end of the structure, the hill just a click from Shali calling for him with coaxing words of the safety of his Kittyhawk and the promise of putting as much distance between him and this goddamn oasis as a full tank will allow him.

Then the wall disappears from beside him, and the next moment something crashes hard against his temple, the dizziness and the black haze in his vision almost instant as he staggers to the side from the impact. One of his hands flies to his head while his other arm flails in the air to grab onto something, but he is in the desert now, and Shali has failed him the moment he stepped outside.

After regaining his balance, Collins straightens out only to look into the black maw of a rifle’s barrel pointing right at him. His gaze flutters to the face behind the rear sight; green eyes in a cold stare, bushy eyebrows drawn together with impersonal hatred, cheek pressed against the stock. Collins slowly raises both his arms in front of him.

The Berber lifts his head from the rifle with caution, and yells something at Collins. As a non-verbal reply, Collins pulls his shoulders up and tips his head to the side; he can’t understand. The other man jabs the gun in his direction, causing Collins to take a startled step backwards. The Berber follows him, pressing the muzzle against the centre of his chest. They waltz like that away from the town for a few more steps.

“Bag,” the local man says then, still keeping Collins at check-mate. “Bag!”

“Alright,” Collins nods, and moves as slowly as he can do so without irritating the Berber, one strap at a time, and he tries to cook up a plausible plan that would not end up with him shot down at right where he stands.

Use the bag as a weapon and distraction, he could manage. Lean downward just enough to tackle the other man from below before he can pull the trigger— no, the distance between them is too large for Collins to make his tackle effective enough. Sweep up a handful of sand to blind him, maybe. Grab the barrel of the rifle and wrestle it out of his grasp in a moment of surprise. Too many to choose from, none of which proves to be fail-proof even though that is what Collins needs the most.

“Now!” the other man snaps, and makes a jerking motion with his weapon. Collins sets the rucksack on the ground, just between his feet, and straightens his back at a snail’s pace, hands in the air once again.

He wouldn’t mind a miracle to come right about now— Collins glances up at the town behind the local man, and his heart misses a beat as he notices the top of the fortress in the distance glowing fiery orange in the very first sunray.

A moment later, the imam’s voice rings out, and the Fajr prayer is like a lifebelt in the sea of sand for Collins, because the Berber man breathes hard, nostrils flaring before he lowers the rifle reluctantly. Collins doesn’t waste a single moment grabbing the bag off the ground and breaking into a mad sprint towards the hill, the soles of his shoes kicking up sand and rocks, its sound the loudest thing in his ears at that moment.

He makes it to the top before the last words of the prayer echo into the distance, and at the bottom of the hill, Collins slows down to a comfortable jog to breathe out his exhaustion. His shoes scrape dully on the sand of the tarmac as he makes his way along the landing strip, eyes trained on the dark shape of an aeroplane in the middle of being taxied out of the hangar.

Reaching his Kittyhawk, Collins motions at Fisher in the cockpit. The man kills the engine before climbing out, and Collins feels the reverberations of Fisher stepping onto the wing in his skull as he rests his upper body on the metal, breathing hard from the lingering adrenaline.

“Five fifteen,” Fisher says, sounding almost insultingly unapologetic. “I had to clean the dust filters as well—”

Collins sticks out a thumb to cut the other man off— he doesn’t care about the filters as long as they are operational. He takes a moment before he looks at the quietened Fisher. “I’m in a hurry. Can you get my equipment?”

Fisher narrows his eyes as he takes in Collins’ haphazard state. He doesn’t comment on it, not his business. “Anything else?”

Collins ignores the sarcasm. “Water.”

Left alone with his plane, Collins takes a careful glance towards the hill, half expecting an army of Berber to come marching towards the airbase with rifles held in the air as if a trophy. Unreasonable, the image is, he knows, yet it roots his feet to the ground until Fisher’s voice breaks him out of his trance.

“Got what you came for?” Fisher asks offhandedly, overseeing as Collins gets ready in the cockpit. Collins shuts his eyes to keep himself from looking to the hills. He hopes Alex is alright— he will be. Alex can take care of himself.

“Even more than what I bargained for,” Collins exhales. He gives his equipment one last once-over, and then looks at Fisher expectantly.

Fisher holds up a tin can and lightly shakes it, showing off its contents. “It’s already loaded. You’ve got five more cartridges,” he says, and leans behind Collins’ seat to place the container in his bag, along with the extra water that Collins grabs out of his hold. “…Good luck.”

After tossing the canister to the back, Collins flicks his wrist in Fisher’s direction and latches the canopy into place. He waits until the armourer has put some distance between them, and Collins switches on the engine— after a loud bang, like a rifle being fired, the Kittyhawk comes to life once again, spluttering black smoke for an insecure moment, before the propeller settles on its steady rpm.

His stomach squeezes into a tight knot the moment the wheels lift off the ground, and a sense of serenity washes over his chest as Collins finally returns to where he belongs— back to the sky between the soft, cold embrace of clouds. It doesn’t stay for too long, however, as Collins detects two dark spots in the distance, the shape of motionless birds flying towards him even before he can leave the oasis’ airspace.

Carrion vultures of the desert, marauding hyenas that pick on lonely preys. They are already locked on Collins’ scent.

Collins pushes the stick, climbing angels fifteen at which a Kittyhawk operates most smoothly, though if those two planes end up being bf 109s, he is going to have deal with a royally fucked up situation. Again. Yet chasing a Spitfire was something he’d never done before that Jerry nicked McFarlane’s kite, and Collins has already gotten used to the Germans’ Messerschmitt strategies. If he can just coax them down to his height without being jumped from above, he has the upper hand even against two foes.

First contact happens when a stocky Macchi C.202 tries to flank him on his starboard, the sun reflected on its canopy warning Collins before he can even spot it, and perhaps it is due to some kind of discoordination between the two Axis pilots that allows Collins to escape the simultaneously diving bf 109’s barrage which almost ends up catching the C.202 instead of Collins’ Kittyhawk.

Collins tries to get behind the bf 109 first, the Macchi’s superior manoeuvrability but weaker armaments posing less danger than its German equivalent. As if Goddess Fortuna has smiled upon Collins, the Messerschmitt keeps the low altitude at which they fly without climbing up and then diving at Collins again. The Macchi, however, stays glued to his tail, mimicking Collins’ every sharp turn with his own, sharper turns and useless bursts of fire.

Collins decides to use the desert to his advantage by descending to angels three, weaving between tall dunes to see the degree to which the enemy pilots are committed to him. To his surprise and utter amusement, the bf 109 follows after him while the Macchi climbs higher, probably to prepare to intercept Collins from above. The Messerschmitt pilot has probably never been to a desert dogfight against a Curtiss – or anyone else for that matter –, as if he was, he wouldn’t let Collins pull him around by the nose in hopes of landing a few hits. The thought that only this inexperience allows Collins to gain the upper hand over the German pilot is somewhat off-putting, but he isn’t going to look the gift horse in the mouth, and spend time pondering about the other outcome.

It’s a strange combination of sudden aggressiveness rising in Collins to offset the Kittyhawks faults and an incredibly dumb teamwork between the bf 109 and the C.202 that lets Collins to lead the Messerschmitt into a deadly trap. Disregarding the Macchi’s tracer fire that misses Collins by a large margin, he gets ready to fight not against the Axis but the Gs as he suddenly glides down the side of a mountainous dune and then he does a hard bank to the left, vision blurring, to get behind-under the unsuspecting ME. He opens fire at the belly of the bf 109, pulling away the last moment. Blood rushes out of his head, and flexing his muscles with a fragment of his training is the only thing that saves Collins from blacking out mid-flight as he tries to orient himself, horizon nowhere to be seen.

No matter how many hours he flies, how many sorties he runs, that moment of disorientation after a blood-thrumming attack against an enemy fighter will always be the most difficult part to come back from. There is simply no way of getting used to it— what a pilot can only hope is to learn how to balance it out.

The Macchi opens fire for nothing more than to remind Collins of his enduring presence, as though a child asking for attention from his parents— the timing of his attacks is almost polite, if not for the abruptly shrinking distance between them, forcing Collins to climb another few thousand feet to a safe height. Within a moment of clarity, Collins wonders how he hasn’t managed to crash himself with this daredevil action.

He doesn’t have time to confirm the kill as the Macchi begins to chase him, turning more aggressive by the moment as if he suddenly remembered that he had a felled ally to avenge.

Wanting to preserve as much fuel as he can in order to still make it to Benghazi without trouble, Collins turns to north-west while avoiding enemy fire. Without a friend that’s got more powerful weapons to help him out, a single Macchi is hardly a match for a Kittyhawk’s six Browning machine guns, though Collins is still at risk of being shot down should he not focus for a single moment.

When Collins glances at the fuel gauge a few minutes after zig-zagging from side to side, he has to do a double-take to make sure he’s seeing it right. Confused at the displayed amount of juice with no way of having already used half his tank, Collins presses the pin, expecting the needle to spring right back to around the three quarter indicator, but instead, he loses another quarter gallon within seconds— was he hit, and if he was, how did he not notice it?

He pushes the throttle forward to slow down and takes a sharp turn to do a quick orbit, hoping to— somehow see the dark spots of the lost gallons of fuel on the dunes beneath him, or to have droplets of it land on his canopy, whatever as long as it confirms his theory as to why the gauge seems to be broken.

The moment he comes out of the orbit, tracer fire whizzes by his cockpit, the Macchi lining up behind him, Collins can see it following him in the dead centre of his mirror; he banks to the right and then to the left, trying to make sure he’s still headed towards the general direction of Benghazi. A quarter of his attention – the one that’s not piloting nor the one currently panicking – focuses on listing off the choices he has: risk losing the majority of his juice to take out the Macchi and pray to god that he makes it to the nearest LG between him and Benghazi, or he can either ignore the C.202 and continue or turn around and go back to Siwa Oasis.

Collins notices the first signs of a sandstorm brewing around him too late, only does so when the sky suddenly turns yellow, and then brown as he finds himself in the heart of the tempest, gusts of wind shoving at and jerking his wings, the stick in his grasp shaking violently, and the plating of the Kittyhawk rattling thunderously. His first instinct is to climb higher to exit the storm from above, but before he can get clear of the sandy haze, his engine stalls, its disappearing noise more terrifying than anything a pilot can hear up in the sky— he switches to his reserves, hoping that the smaller tank is still intact, and Collins can feel the nose of the plane tip over, gaining speed towards the ground as gravity pulls at them.

“Come on, darlin’,” Collins hisses through gritted teeth, his jaw cracking as he does another attempt to ignite the engine again, crying out with a loud _‘that’s my girl!’_ when after a pathetic cough, the engine starts, and Collins pulls the plane back just in time— he barely sees anything ahead of him, but he can practically feel the top of a dune scratching along the underbelly of his kitty.

While trying to keep the unrelenting high winds at bay, Collins takes a glance at the compass— only to see the needle spinning around madly without stopping as though Collins was surrounded by tiny pieces of magnetic sand that drove his compass insane. Before he can proceed with his original plan of flying out above the sandstorm, however, the shape of a familiar aircraft appears out of nowhere from his left side, and as if wanting to message Collins, aligns itself right in front of him. On its tail, Collins catches the RAF’s logo and a series of numbers and letters he knows by heart.

Farrier—

No. It’s not Farrier.

It’s not a Spitfire, but a Macchi: it’s the C.202 that almost downed him.

Collins presses the trigger without thinking this time, but just after a moment of celebrating the sight of the smoke erupting from the Macchi’s fuselage, his Kittyhawk splutters out of life, the propeller on his nose slowing down, and no matter how desperately Collins tries to breathe the life back into the engine, he follows after the downed C.202 with dread rising in his throat.

He doesn’t even have time to regret anything as he crashes into the desert right behind the Macchi.


	2. ACT II - Dune in an Hourglass/The Great Sand Sea

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey, it's been long, hasn't it? writer's block and depression has been a bitch on me, so thats why it took me so long to finish the chapter. but now that im going back to university after 8 months, as it is always before a deadline, i suddenly got the motivation to write, so:
> 
> introducing the other "main" character, an OC inspired by a real life hungarian pilot/explorer who fought in both WWI and WWII, and the mapping and exploration of some parts of the sahara is thanks to his expeditions despite various obstacles. 
> 
> also, i decided to expand the fic into 3 chapters because when ACT II has reached 12k in length i realized that it's still not enough for the OC to actually be his own character. if it makes sense. i want to give him more time to develop.

ACT II – Dune in an Hourglass/The Great Sand Sea

 

_‘Fly, dotard, fly! With thy wise dreams and fables of the sky!’_

 

Collins wakes buried in a tomb of sand, like a pharaoh laid to rest in a plane-shaped sarcophagus made of metal. His uniform has wrapped around his body like bindings of a mummy, and there is so much pain it can only be comparable to the instance of having one’s organs removed completely—not that Collins has ever had his organs removed, but he imagines it to be extremely painful. Or is this dying-level painful already?

It’s pitch black inside the cockpit even after Collins opens his eyes, feels his eyelids blinking, and the dreadful panic that he’s gone blind overcomes the pain radiating in his torso as he writhes within the cage of his straps, like a trapped animal, tearing off the oxygen mask and his flight cap, and he doesn’t stop until he spills the contents of his bag onto his lap and to the cockpit’s floor to find Smith’s lighter in a bout of utter hysteria.

Then Collins sees a blurry orange spot that warms his face, and he blinks and waves the lighter in and out of his vision until his sight comes to full sharpness. He checks his own body, eyes rowing over every inch that he can see, making sure not to set his clothes on fire on accident – because that would be _painful_ –, and sighs in relief when he doesn’t discover any red spots on his outfit—the light goes out for a moment by the blow of air.

First, he drinks, advice by the RAF manual to portion available water be damned, and spills half the content on his face and neck accidentally. The canister slips out of his wet fingers and soils his entire lap. He groans—now he looks like he’s pissed himself. Or he has really pissed himself. It wouldn’t be an unlikely concept: people do all sorts of things when they are about to die.

Collins trashes around for a few seconds, screaming until his throat grows hoarse and his ears begin to ring. Too exhausted to continue his sudden outburst, he settles back into the seat and looks around with pitch-thick dread rising in his throat.

The canopy above his head gives a muffled crack, and Collins suddenly realizes the direness of his situation. In the utter silence following the crack, as he holds his breath, he hears the howling of wind beyond the glass—he shouldn’t be buried too deep, meaning he could dig himself out. Somehow.

Another crack comes, and a blurry string of sand begins to trickle down in the middle of the cockpit, right into his lap, eerily if not terrifyingly similar to some of his dreams, a quickly filling hourglass. Collins plasters his hand against the fissure as he thinks. Sand spills over his fingers, into a small pile in his palm, clock ticking.

As he hurriedly packs everything back into his bag and flings a strap over his shoulder, breathing becomes harder and harder, rapidly using the little oxygen that must be left in the cockpit. The mask lies uselessly between his feet.

Enveloped in complete darkness once again, Collins tries to pull back the canopy with both hands, but it doesn’t budge. He resists the urge to drink the air like he drank his water, lungs begging for more and more, seemingly insatiable. He knows he doesn’t have much, maybe even less time than what he believes he does, but it’s becoming more difficult to think straight as the buzzing in the back of his mind spreads slowly, a plague infecting his rationality.

He feels the walls of the cockpit closing in on him, and no matter how much he pleads his kitty to be merciful to him one last time, the plane remains stubborn as an ox, and continues to slowly crush him. Her metal fuselage groans, and the glass of the canopy cracks. For a weak moment, but one that flaunts itself as a whole eternity, Collins feels hopeless, and angry, and desperate—has he really survived the crash just to die trapped inside his plane? Wouldn’t that be _too_ crude—and if yes, what had he done to deserve such a fate?

Taking a leap of final faith, Collins turns his head towards the sky, closes his eyes and takes a deep breath before a waterfall of sand rushes into the cockpit, right into his face, pushing at him like an arm of a sentient desert. He forces his own arms upward, a shard of glass slashing the skin of his left, and he claws his way out of his grave, digging and digging for a long time until his head surfaces, and he’s reborn.

Through the red of his eyelids, almost blinded this time, Collins pulls himself out of his tomb, and flops down onto something incredibly hot that scalds his exposed skin—right in the middle of his lower left arm. He rolls away two or three times and curls in on himself as he tries to shield his eyes from the burning sunshine. The hot wind is unbearable, and Collins knows he can’t remain out in the open for too long, but he just cannot bring himself to move until he’s caught his breath and waited for the pain in his torso to subside—then the sting on his arm takes over, prompting Collins to finally open his eyes.

Only able to squint in the overbearing brightness, he brings his hurt limb close to his face as he sits up to inspect his injury. A long, but shallow gash between his wrist and elbow, blood beading along the slash like a paper-cut and angry red from the burn, but for the pain it takes priority over the dull throbbing in his side and the glare of the sun.

He moves carefully to peel off his jacket, and hisses at the motion when he tears off the sleeve of his thin shirt, giving him just enough material to wrap it around the wound twice. He stares at it for a long moment, but it barely bleeds through, a small mercy considering his royally fucked up situation.  

Collins looks at the sorry state of his plane, half-buried in sand by its nose, the tip of her wings and most of her tail end pointing towards the sky. For a moment he allows himself to shudder at the thought that if he was in a Spitfire, he might not have survived the crash, a Kittyhawk’s chassis being a lot more durable: it had saved him multiple times, and so did it one last time.

He sheds a tear for his beloved kite, and then another for his doomed fate.

Cradling his injured arm, having made a makeshift split with one sleeve of his jacket, Collins climbs to his feet. He drapes the jacket over his head and shoulders to protect himself from the blazing sun and the wind, and stands solemnly on the wing of his plane for a silent minute, sending her off with gratitude and a final drop of tear his dried up body can wring out in her honour, wishing for a ceremonial burial the plane would deserve instead of this unmarked grave made of ruthless sand. With a last thought, Collins rummages through his bulging rucksack and clumsily pulls his knife out of its leather sheath, stepping up to the plane on its port right behind the cockpit, and carves into it his surname and two dates from the day he got the Kittyhawk till two days after he left Aswan. He backs away to look at his handiwork, and turns away. Let future’s historians find his plane at least.

With the sandstorm having passed while he was out of it, he can see for miles and miles of orange-golden-yellow dunes in every direction, and above him the sky is clear and impossibly blue. There’s not a single landmark that he can use to orient himself, and the compass lies buried in the cockpit. With nothing better to do, Collins begins climbing to the top of the dune to see the other side.

When he arrives to the peak, he immediately notices the unmistakeable shape of another plane less than a click from his position, its colours too familiar for Collins to even begin weighing possibilities. Paying no mind to the danger it poses to his current state, Collins descends the gentle slope of the dune, stumbling with each step as the sand swallows and gives way from his boots. He keeps his eyes glued to the rippling image of the Spitfire, afraid that if he looks away just for a moment, the plane will disappear into thin air, like a cruel, cruel mirage.

The service number of Farrier’s Spitfire painted on the fuselage comes like a punch to the gut, and Collins is left breathless, leaning against the sizzling metal as it warms through his gloves instantly. He squeezes his eyes shut, willing the image to stay for a few more minutes. He doesn’t care if it’s just his mind playing games with him—he just wants to see Farrier’s face one last time before he takes on his last journey in the desert.

He steps on top of the wing, lower part of the plane trapped in sand, and yanks back the canopy with a deliberate swing of his healthy arm.

A pilot, face hidden behind mask and googles, looks up at him slowly. A ghost of the desert that keeps following Collins around: he shares Farrier’s bulky physique, but nothing else. Collins swallows and takes a trembling step back along the wing as the unknown pilot rises from his cockpit menacingly—fur-lined Irvin jacket and knit sweater, and dark blue trousers. The disconnected hose of his oxygen mask flops to and fro in front of his legs as he takes a confident – threatening – step towards Collins.

That’s how Collins had last seen Farrier at landing strip no. 1 at Uxbridge Aerodrome before taking off for Dunkirk. A day he will never forget.

That’s how Collins has imagined meeting Farrier for months after Dunkirk: he would come back from France in his own Spitfire, completely unharmed, wearing his jacket and sweater and battledress underneath, because he would be so cold even during summer, too proud to actually admit to it. He would come back as if Dunkirk was just a patrol sortie along the coastline, and he and Collins would continue where they had left off, Dunkirk nothing but a mission report and a nightmare for the sleepless nights and their demons to feed on.

But with each returning Spitfire at Uxbridge, every pilot was Farrier to Collins until they took off their masks and caps, and after that Collins had allowed Farrier haunt him everywhere else, not just on the landing strip. He’s never had the courage to admit to himself that he was tired of it—he’s gotten tired of Farrier’s memory. He’s tired of chasing Farrier around in the fucking desert. Chasing this shadow of Farrier, at least. All he wants, at this point of near breaking, is to see the real Farrier once and for all.

But that is a thought for delirious moments, for when reality blurs under the slipping grip of his perception, and now—now Collins cannot allow that if he wants to survive this ordeal.

“Don’t,” Collins whimpers when the unknown pilot reaches up to his mask, ready to take it off. Collins wants to say something else, but when he finally finds the elusive words, the ground disappears from beneath his feet, and he catches himself falling backwards, heart plummeting into his stomach as he plummets into an abyss.

He blinks back into wakefulness with his face buried in the sand, pain drilling into his arm and his backpack lying on top of his head, its contents spilled out once again. His handgun rests right in front of his eyes, pristine black, unused. He can’t even recall if he’s ever loaded it.

Without wasting a moment, Collins grabs the gun and jumps to his feet, twirling around on his heels.

In place of the Spitfire, a sand-coloured Macchi lies behind an unknown man. The pilot is wearing a blue-grey uniform, and instead of the swastika, Collins sees the Luftwaffe’s eagle embroidered on the man’s left breast carrying a dead hawk. After a blink, the hawk is gone, but the eagle remains.

The Axis pilot asks something, and it doesn’t even sound like German. Maybe Italian. It doesn’t make a difference; Collins barely speaks any of the languages.

“Stop right there,” Collins hisses when the other pilot tries to take a calculated step towards him. The German man freezes and raises his hands—it reminds Collins oddly of his own situation earlier this morning, when he was in the pilot’s place, held at gunpoint by a local Berber.

He wonders why the Berber man hadn’t pulled the trigger on him—Collins wonders why he can’t bring himself to pull the trigger and be done with it, like the Berber should have done. It would have saved a lot of people a lot of trouble.

Ending a human life is not a new concept to Collins, not anymore. He’s killed at least two dozen other German pilots but it doesn’t mean it gets easier with each occasion—there’s no getting used to it, not at least for him. There’s only a mantra, a chant; _we’re just pawns we have orders it’s not on me but politicians and madmen it’s nothing personal mate,_ becoming more and more practiced that takes over the nausea, and that right there, creates a blissful illusion.

“Nem egymás ellenségei vagyunk most,” says the pilot then.

“English!” Collins jabs his pistol towards the other man aggressively. “This gun only speaks English—”

In a blink of an eye the gun is gone from Collins’ grip, the German pilot appearing right in front of him, and his fingers are left grabbing after nothing but empty air in confusion.

“Okay, now it speaks German too,” Collins swallows, staring at the muzzle of his own gun in betrayal.

The other pilot snorts, cocking the gun. “Not German. Hungarian.”

“I don’t speak Hungarian,” Collins blurts out, unable to take his eyes off the weapon. How ironic would it be for a pilot to be killed by his own handgun that he’s never even used before? Collins hopes nobody will ever find out his fate—he’s not keen on having future historians dub him as the dumbest pilot in Second World War.

Because, for one, he does feel like the dumbest pilot in the world right now. He hasn’t even made it farther than a click from where his plane crashed—some godawful survivalist he is.

“I figured,” the Axis pilot says, just shy of condescending. Collins takes a deep breath, knowing that level-headedness is his only chance—if the Axis pilot wanted him dead, he would have shot Collins already. Which means—

“So—what do you want from me?” Collins asks. “You wanna shoot me, just get on with it because I’m sweating me arse off.”

The other pilot snickers, and Collins is not sure if it’s sarcasm or he did genuinely find Collins’ comment entertaining—neither probability is what Collins would call a sign that the other pilot will let him go on his merry way. It doesn’t hurt to try, though.

“I’m just giving you a chance to acclimatize to Hell,” the other man retorts with an entertained grin, and yeah, it was definitely the former.

“How nice of you.”

“Don’t worry, I’m not going to shoot you right now,” the Hungarian pilot says then, confusing Collins for a moment. He takes a step back, trying not to let his guard down and get his hopes up, failing miserably at both.

The pilot hops off the wing, exchanging high ground for proximity as he steps closer to Collins, who in hindsight, is not entirely sure what exactly the other man is planning. And _that_ puts him on edge in all sorts of way.

“Am I supposed to be thankful now?” Collins scoffs in order to downplay his absolute uncertainty, keeping his distance. Unbeknownst to both, they begin to slowly circle around, and only does Collins notice this when the Macchi starts closing in on him—or him closing in on the Macchi. The Axis pilot seems to have not realized the slow turn of tables yet, and that Collins can work with.

The plane should have a flare gun, shouldn’t it? If only Collins could get behind it, distract the pilot with his bag and take that moment to get the gun, he could take control of the situation back fairly easily—which means without him dying. But Lord did it sound like the worse plan to have ever been conceived in his brain.

“I’m tracking stolen documents supposedly taken to Shali,” the pilot is saying, all his cards laid out just like that. Collins stares at the other man—he must be horrible at playing cards. “You don’t happen to know anything about it, do you?”

“Nah, don’t know nothin’ about any stolen documents,” Collins shrugs, spreading his palms towards the sky, hoping that the hand gesture is distracting enough. “Was only there to get my kite fixed—which, by the way, thank you _so_ much for shredding it again.”

To Collins’ utter surprise – while he himself tries not to gape at the ridiculousness of his own words and the possibility of having secured his own death for not being able to shut his mouth – the Axis pilot says, as if he’s just been proffered gratitude to: “You’re welcome.”

This is definitely not how Collins imagined the trip to go. In his head, all he had were two outcomes: either he made it to Malta by some kind of a miracle, or he died—he liked not to go into details of how that would happen, but he definitely did not think it would be preceded by a gamble of wits with an enemy pilot, who, despite revealing his plans, was still a tightly closed book to Collins. That, or the heat has begun getting to him again, in which case he needs to end this stupid little game as soon as he can.

 _Choose_ , says Farrier, a hot gust carrying his voice, _the pilot or thirst?_

And there Farrier stands on the roof of the plane, one knee bent and bracing his arm on his thigh as he looks down at Collins with a crooked smirk, and Collins vaguely recollects a similar image with the dark hangar in the background instead of the desert, asking something different but still prompting Collins to choose between two things.

“It’s up to you,” says the pilot as though he was ending Farrier’s own question, and for the moment it takes Collins’ heart to skip a beat, he is convinced that the other man can see Farrier too, but no—he definitely does not see Farrier like Collins does, because his eyes jump between Collins and an empty spot on the plane, eyebrows disappearing behind the line of his askew flight cap. A not yet connected assumption begins to form wrinkles on his weathered face, but that Collins misses entirely as he focuses on Farrier’s grin.

“Oh, no, no, no,” Collins laughs to himself, shaking his head without taking his eyes off either Farrier or the pilot. “Not this again.”

The Hungarian man scrunches his face in confusion, following Collins’ slow approach towards the plane with the pistol still raised in an iron grip.

“Oh, but yes indeed,” Farrier nods so as to mirror Collins’ shake of head.

“ _’Not this again’_?” the pilot questions in interest, but still somewhat puzzled. After a moment, he speaks again: “Curious. You do have the face of someone who gets in trouble a lot. Tell me, Mr. Heatstroke, are you a troublemaker?”

“ _No_ ,” presses Collins with a hiss, and lurches behind the cover of the plane. The wind howls, and blood rushes in Collins’ ears, just shy of overwhelming the sound of a bullet ricocheting off the plating of the plane.

“Wrong move!” brings the wind the pilot’s yell.

“Look, mate!” replies Farrier, yelling just as loud from somewhere above while Collins crouches behind his hiding place, curled into a ball. “I’ve got no idea what you’re yappin’ about, but let’s make a deal, eh?”

An answer comes ingrained in the tell-tale arrival of a bullet, whipping past above Collins’ head. It sounds almost like a whistle trying to coax him out. Not a chance—Collins will not come out wagging his tail like a pet dog.

“Bloody hell!” Farrier shrieks, dancing on top of the plane like some kind of drunkard, “learn to aim, old bugger!”

Two more bullets follow suit as if to make some kind of statement that Collins, even under the blurry haze of heat, can understand well enough not to make an attempt to peek out—he should move, on the other hand, because there is no doubt the Axis pilot is slowly advancing towards him, probably to the same position from where Collins has come.

But a matter of minutes under the influence of the desert all the while hallucinating a very much living and breathing version of his – long dead – best friend is more likely to feel like a short eternity, so Collins is not that much worried for now.

“Hey, how many rounds you’ve got?” Farrier asks, in a casual tone as though he was just asking for a fag. “You’ll run out before you can kill me.”

“What makes you think I want to kill you?” the pilot retorts from the other side of the battlefield.

“Uh, ‘cause you’re shooting at me with a murder weapon?”

Collins lets loose a mix of sigh and groan. This cannot get any more ridiculous as it is.

But it does.

“Oh, would you look at that! I’m out,” announces the pilot after a short period of silence. The desert around them has settled into some kind of static image of itself—it’s unnervingly quiet as if Collins has gone deaf without even a single ring in his head to fill in the void, and the dunes lie frozen around them. Not even a grain of sand dares to move, all watching them with bated breath, like they were actors in some kind of play in the theatre.

Horrible, horrible script and dialogue if someone asks Collins. The critics would hate it.

“No, sir, nah-uh,” says Farrier, voicing the same thought in Collins’ mind. “I will not fall for this cheap trick.”

As if the pilot has expected the same reaction, not even a moment later lands the gun right in between Collins’ spread legs, with the barrel digging into the sand. It’s his own pistol, all right, the chamber empty when Collins reaches for it to check.

“Well, undress me and tie me naked to a panzer—it is indeed empty. Ha!” Farrier whoops in triumph, jumping back to the roof of the plane. “The old bugger speaks the truth!”

Either in a bit of adrenaline at the promise of hope-survival-home and a dozen other things or the same triumph with which Farrier cheers – or good old insanity rooting in the heatstroke –, Collins springs to his feet and launches his torso over the side of the Macchi to reach inside the cockpit.

In the corner of his eye, he notices a flash of _another_ pistol in the Axis pilot’s hand, no doubt locked and loaded.

Collins finds the flare gun when a bullet punches through the cockpit’s port and flies past his good arm with which he grabs for the weapon. He uses the – now screaming in pain – muscles of his back and abdomen – blessed be all those sit-ups – to lift his torso, and braces himself against the cockpit with his functional arm while the other one rests tied to his body uselessly.

He takes aim at the Hungarian pilot, but it’s hard to aim when his legs are hanging off the plane’s starboard while his body is most awkwardly reaching across the cockpit with his chest resting on the port side.

At least the Axis pilot looks impressed enough not to pull the trigger immediately.

“That’s—” starts Farrier, now standing between them on the wing, “I don’t even know, mate. This is better than a circus.”

“A ticket for two?” the pilot snorts, entertaining Collins. His eyes then row across the battlefield. “Or three?”

“ _Wrong,”_ Collins snarls, like an injured hound – he _is_ injured for that matter – and halfway between them Farrier barks and howls in a poor imitation of a pet dog – it sounds eerily similar to the Yorkshire terrier their squadron used as mascot for about two weeks before it had mysteriously disappeared. Farrier has been convinced their C/O had taken it home.

But before Collins can pull the trigger of the flare gun, Farrier stands right in front of it, his forehead pressed to the barrel, and grins wickedly up at Collins.

“This is not how you make friends,” says Farrier, and just before the moment Collins shoots, the other pilot fists his shirt at his shoulders and gives Collins a mighty pull. Multiple things happen that moment: the flare gun slips out of his grasp, barrel down inside the cockpit, Collins following along falling face first into the seat, right on top of his injured arm, legs towards the sky, all the while the Hungarian pilot begins to howl with laughter. And that’s not even the most absurd of all, because then he jumps onto the wing and grabs Collins by his legs, while Collins watches, blood frozen, as the sparks from the flare reach an exposed copper wire.

The plane explodes, and Collins and the Hungarian pilot go tumbling down the side of the dune, with each roll Collins does sending a jolt of sharp pain up his arm. The world goes black before he reaches the bottom.

_There’s Uxbridge surrounded by a sea and a desert, both at the same time. The heat rolls off of the landing strip in waves. Only some parts of the aerodrome are visible, like some of the hangars or the barracks. An assortment of both allied and enemy planes line the runway, but all are carcasses having returned from the war, forgotten. Too damaged to be repaired. There’s his Kittyhawk too, standing proud with her chipped fangs and snarl, cockpit filled to the brim with sand, and a burned out Macchi next to it, still spewing a tower of black smoke into the sky._

_Collins had gone to war to fight for his homeland, not to make friends, but along the way he’d gained a lifelong companion within Farrier. Their friendship had started when Collins almost crashed into Farrier’s Hurricane after landing, having been assigned to each other for the sortie so that inexperienced Collins would at least have a chance at returning._

_“That’s not how you make friends,” Farrier said when Collins reached him and his Hurricane on the way to the hangar._

_“I’m not here to make friends,” Collins said, and yeah, maybe that was why most of the others said he had a stick up his arse, but as long as Collins knew that he could trust them as a soldier, they didn’t need to be friends._

_Losing friends hurt a lot more._

_“That is a big problem,” Farrier replied, patting along his pockets. “Bollocks, d’you have any fags? I’m out.”_

_Collins looked at Farrier incredulously. “I have in my locker.”_

_Farrier gestured towards the barracks. “Then, lead the way.”_

_And thus began Collins’ friendship with Farrier. Collins, the pretentious prick with no one to call a friend, and Farrier, a bloody chimney who ripped everyone off of their fags and had no friends because all of them were dead already. What an amazing pair they made._

_“What’s this plane?” asks Farrier when they’re about to pass Collins’ Kittyhawk. Collins stops walking towards the hangar that seems to be always at the same distance from them, and looks at the Kittyhawk Farrier is examining._

_“My last one,” Collins says, unable to keep the sourness out of his voice. He wishes he could get the chance to speak one last time with the real Farrier. “I got it some time after you died. In North Africa.”_

_“Shite, I’m dead?” Farrier asks, furrowing his brows. He seems taken aback enough._

_“You might as well be,” Collins shrugs. “You would’ve hated her,” he nods at the plane._

_“You underestimate me,” Farrier laughs. “Unlike you, I can make friends easily.”_

_Collins lets out a sarcastic laugh of his own. “Aye, no doubt you would’ve made friends with the Nazis had you gotten your chance.”_

_“Who’s saying I haven’t? The guards are nice enough when you’re nice to ‘em,” Farrier says, spreading his arms. “They’re just people like us. There is this bloke, Gunther or whatever his name is—you know I’m horrible with names—”_

_“Farrier,” Collins cuts him off abruptly. It feels weird to say the other man’s name out loud, like he hasn’t done it in a very long time. Crow’s feet appear in the corner of Farrier’s eyes as he narrows them. “You’re dead. You’ve been dead since Dunkirk—at least to a part of me that refused to—” he looks away for a moment, searching for the right words, “—to latch onto these false hopes that somehow,_ somehow _, I would get to see you after the war.”_

_The silence between them stretches on eternally. “Is this why you’ve been intent on staying with the DAF?”_

_Collins looks back at Farrier in confusion. “I’m—I’m not trying to—if that’s what you’re suggesting,” he stutters._

_“Good,” Farrier nods, “because you need to get that codebook to Malta. People are counting on you. I am counting on you.”_

_“Easy enough,” Collins laughs hollowly, “cross the fucking desert by foot, no big deal. Let me win the whole bloody war while I’m at it, eh?”_

_Farrier is not there anymore, but his voice still lingers: “It’s only difficult if you’re alone.”_

Collins comes to with a dry gasp. For long minutes he does nothing but replay his conversation with Dream-Farrier and still there is a part of Collins that stubbornly holds onto the hope that his friend is alive—however foolish it might be. That same part of him refuses to let go of the dream, keeping it in his grasp desperately, because—

He is not dead.

Well. Not yet.

The wind sighs along with Collins as he opens his eyes to the sky. Stars twinkle brightly on the dark canvas, a sight that not even in the countryside can people see, nor in Europe altogether— the African night sky is as if it is of another world, marvellous, filling everyone who looks upon it with inexplicable wonder and hope. Wars stain the ground with blood, but the stars—the stars will still be there on the sky long after humans are gone. They never fail to make Collins feel even smaller than he already does; and still, every night he goes to gaze at them because this—this always makes up for the heat, the sweat, the sand during the day. Every night his hate for the desert would ebb away, a restless push and pull.

Even now the sight overwhelms the throbbing pain all across his body and the ache in his head, despite his senses going wild. He struggles to latch onto something _solid_ , something _definite_ that would keep his head above the water, because without Farrier, Collins always drowns.

“Easy.”

“Farrier?” Collins croaks, his voice barely recognizable. Looking behind the veil of pain, he feels around his body with his right arm until it slips off his body and touches some kind of textile underneath him. One by one his senses begin to work properly.

“Not exactly,” comes the reply in a familiar voice. There’s a hint of accent, too.

Collins clambers up to all fours – or three, in his case – and looks at the unknown pilot in bewilderment. There is fire crackling between them, but Collins doesn’t have the time to check what fuels it. His mind goes to his backpack.

“Take it easy,” says the pilot, holding his hands in a defensive attitude, having risen to one knee as if he was trying to calm a wild animal. “There’s no need for hostilities.”

“Oh, you think?” Collins heaves, ready to bolt should the other pilot pull out his pistol—even though it would not make sense for the other man to have waited until Collins woke up to shoot him.

His eyes jump around the little camp until he notices his sand coloured backpack lying just at the base of his makeshift bed – a torn parachute part – and he lungs for it, hand going for the pocket where the knife is stashed.

The Hungarian pilot is still unarmed even as Collins holds the knife towards him with shaking hands. Exhaustion creeps up his legs as he kneels on the ground, too tired to stand up. The pilot regards him with a questioning look, again, almost condescending as if he dared Collins to go through with this plan.

“We are not each other’s enemies right now,” the pilot says then, like a sage, and in the flickering flames that cast long shadows on his face, Collins can see the deep wrinkles criss-crossing his features. He could easily be Collins’ father by the looks of it, but Collins has always been notoriously bad at guessing someone’s age.

Collins heaves. “Tell that to the five missing rounds in my gun.”

Something flashes in the pilot’s eyes as he looks at Collins’ face. “If I wanted to kill you, you’d be dead already.”

Collins huffs after a moment of consideration—as much as he refuses to, he has to admit that the pilot has a point.

The tension between them seeps out of the silence when Collins drops the knife and sits back on the parachute with a long sigh. He buries his face into one palm. “Fuck.”

He hears the pilot move, and Collins jerks his head up to look at the other man. The pilot shifts in his seat, sitting down back with his legs crossed—relaxed.

Collins is anything but relaxed. They are stranded in the middle of a bloody desert, for God’s sake. How can anyone be relaxed?

“Sorry I shot at you,” the pilot apologizes, to which Collins throws his head back and begins to laugh towards the sky, if not, but at the ridiculousness of it. Wait till he returns to London and tells his mates about this—no one will believe him. Farrier might, if only for the sake of not letting his best friend make a fool of himself with his hallucinated tales from the desert, but Farrier is very, very far from London, now, isn’t he?

Very far indeed.

“You should have killed me while you could,” Collins laughs, shaking his head. He looks at the other pilot, desperate to understand the reason as to why he’s still alive. He hasn’t given up all hope yet, and if there was the slightest chance of getting out of the desert—well, Collins would try it. One could say that he is a very stubborn person; for the better or worse, that was up to the situation.

The pilot stands up suddenly, steps around the small campfire, and Collins freezes when he reaches behind his back and pulls Collins’ gun out from his belt.

Collins lifts his arms in the air, falling backward in his surprise. “H-hey now.”

The pilot assesses him with an unreadable expression for a long moment, and then flips the gun around on his finger, with the grip held towards Collins, as if a request for truce in their war. Collins slowly gets to his feet, just an arm’s reach out, not yet sure where to place the pilot’s antics.

“Your enemy is not me, but the desert,” the pilot says, nodding his head to encourage Collins; he won’t pull anything. Or so Collins thinks. “C’mon Mr. Troublemaker, take it.”

Collins takes the gun and steps back.

The pilot returns to his own side and sits down on his own parachute-bed again, but his expression is still guarded, at least from what Collins can see in the orange light of the fire, and he doesn’t like it, not one bit. The pilot moves as if he was preparing for something.

To catch Collins off-guard, probably. So much for ceasefire.

“Then who’s _your_ enemy?” Collins demands quietly, swiping a thumb over the hammer absentmindedly. “The desert, or me?”

“Neither.”

Collins raises the gun and cocks it, the sound almost as loud as if it just went off. “I don’t think so.”

When Collins looks up with a smug grin on his face, the smirk quickly falters as the Hungarian pilot holds his own pistol at Collins, a slight crease between his brows; he doesn’t appear disappointed, nor angry, but more as if he’s expected Collins to do just this. The thought of it almost drives Collins mad—is the pilot playing with him? Like a predator plays with its food, throwing it into the air before tearing into it—he’s saved Collins just to kill him after giving him a taste of hope that he might escape.

“You’re mad,” Collins leers, jabbing the barrel towards the pilot.

“It’s not loaded,” the pilot states, holding the pistol with one steady hand. Collins’ right hand shakes terribly, and he lifts his left arm to wrap his other hand around the grip despite the pain from his injury—which seems to be properly bandaged this time. “Put it down, son. You’re smarter than this.”

“You’re a fucking lunatic, like all the other Nazis,” Collins snarls, tears welling up in his eyes from the anger. He’s terrified for his life like he’d never been before, because without his kite, he feels so, so vulnerable, and he’s only got one bullet to win this—one bullet that he could use to put himself out of his misery.

How long would he last in the desert, frankly? Despite the plus supplies, they were but a lie to himself – and perhaps, to Smith so he would rest assured of Collins’ fate – nothing more. One more canteen of water, one more box of crackers will hardly save Collins—just prolong his suffering. Quite a handful of aircrew have gone missing in the desert without ever returning.

But that is not an option for Collins. He has so much more to accomplish, and if he has to die in the desert, it will not be done by his own hands. Despite Farrier’s claims, Collins has not spent so much time with the DAF – voluntarily – because he had a death-wish.

No, Collins doesn’t want to die. Which leaves him with two options, neither particularly pleasant but still necessary: either he shoots the pilot, takes his supplies and tries to survive the Sahara alone, or – somehow – make amends with the pilot and join forces with him until they are back to civilization—hell, maybe they can even finish it in the air, after all, they both have sworn their allegiances to the sky. Despite being on different sides, they are both pilots with a sense of honour.

Collins catches his wandering thoughts fairly early before he can go down that road, and readjusts his grip on the pistol. He has to focus.

“It seems to me that we are at a stalemate,” the Axis pilot states, his calm facade appearing to be more than just pure show. Why the hell is he so damn calm? It’s like he knows something that Collins doesn’t—

Wait. What if the gun is truly not loaded?

No, there has to be a last bullet in the chamber, but that Collins can’t make sure of—the moment he checks the chamber, he gives the pilot enough time to pull the trigger on him.

“Well,” Collins speaks up then. Two can play this game. “I s’pose whoever falls asleep sooner loses.”

Even if his pistol is not loaded, there is still the knife in his rucksack that he’s put back. Why did the pilot not take his knife then? He certainly has gone through Collins’ bag, based on the rolled up Manual feeding the fire—so much for the crosswords and any new way of surviving the desert those back in London might’ve cooked up, and—fuck.

The codebook.

Collins, without taking his eyes or the gun off the other pilot, carefully pulls the bag to his side and begins rummaging through it blindly until his hand catches the edge of the slightly bigger jacket of _Odyssey_ on the codebook. His shoulders suddenly feel free of a heavy rock.

“I read the manual—don’t worry, I’ve only memorized your landing strip of Marrakech,” the Axis pilot says, his eyes taking just a blink to see what Collins is doing. “I’ve read _Odyssey_ many times before.”

Collins takes a moment to exhale in relief—he can’t do more than to take the pilot at face-value and trust his words. Collins supposes he would not be this friendly if he found the codebook in the bag. He hums a reply, not bothering to open his mouth, instead he scowls.

It doesn’t seem to discourage the pilot from acting friendly. He raises an index finger towards the sky, and Collins nearly falls for it. “Have you seen such a magnificent sight?”

“Not outside the desert,” Collins says, keeping his eyes trained on the other pilot. He can vaguely remember the sky to which he awoke, but he’s gazed at the stars so many nights during his stay in North Africa that it is ingrained in his brain by now; he could map the sky on his own.

The Axis man nods, agreeing. “Indeed. Nowhere else can quite compare.”

Collins watches closely as the other pilot follows his movements with two sharp eyes, like a hawk, and the bob of his adam’s apple when Collins pulls out his water canteen tells him enough. The way his skin seems to sag under his chin gives Collins a general idea of how old the Axis pilot must be, but it’s hardly a leverage in their personal war.

Droplets escape his lips as Collins lifts the canteen without lifting his head so he can keep his eyes trained on the pilot. The other man swallows again.

He slowly holds out a hand. “Would you be so kind...?”

“Why?” Collins tilts his head to the side.

“Because I saved you.”

“Yet you keep aiming your gun at me.”

“So do you,” the pilot retorts.

Collins grimaces. “You shot me down.”

“So did you.” Before Collins can reply, the pilot adds: “And you blew up my plane, and everything I had with me.”

Collins hesitates. “Alright, fair enough,” he says, and tosses the canteen over the small fire, the pilot catching it in his lap with one hand. The way he gulps to ease his apparent thirst betrays his outward calmness. The thought that he’s dependent on Collins’ food and water doesn’t pass by Collins.

Nor does the moment of doubt in his own resolution to get rid of the Axis pilot when the chance to do so arises as Collins holds his gun but doesn’t pull the trigger while the other man drinks, chin lifted and eyes closed, completely and utterly vulnerable for those few seconds—almost taunting Collins of exactly what he’s doing: not going along with his threats.

No, Collins doesn’t really want to kill the pilot, but he’s got to look out for himself, and despite the numerous opportunities to shoot Collins, not once did the pilot hint at wishing to do so. But this all has to be one big ploy, Collins is sure. There is no other way why a Nazi—the _enemy_ who’s killed so many brave British sons and their allies, would refuse to add one more to the counter.

Too much is at risk—mostly his own life, but above surviving the desert, he wants to finish his mission by safely delivering the book to Malta in time; he won’t be able to look in the mirror if all those civilians on the island died because of him.

The codebook _must_ get to Malta, no matter what.

But maybe, Collins might have better chances with the pilot’s help.

That doesn’t mean, though, that he will be the first to lay down his arms. It can either be good old-fashioned pride or paranoia, it doesn’t change the fact that if Collins has misjudged the other pilot, he will pay for his mistake with his life.

“What’s your name, son?” the pilot asks. He’s just recently shifted into a more comfortable position, propping the arm with which he holds his own pistol on his knee. Unconsciously, Collins has followed suit, mirroring the pilot’s stance to ease the strain that settled into his good arm some time ago.

Collins lets out a quiet growl, not keen on making friends with the enemy; the thought of it feels like the complete betrayal of the many sacrifices of the Allies and of Collins’ own, and everything they are fighting for. It shouldn’t be so easy to throw all these away for the sake of surviving another day so that Collins can go back to fighting and meeting his end in the sky.

But the success of the mission trumps every other doubts, and sometimes— _sometimes_ the means don’t matter, only the end.

And if it means that Collins has to ally himself with the enemy—well, he only has to convince himself, because no one else will care how he does it. Collins has rarely thought about such intricacies of the war, but he’s never been forced into a situation where he actually needed to consider whether pulling the trigger and shooting was the best decision.

God, everything was much easier when the enemy was faceless and nameless.

“My name is Almásy,” says the pilot. “But you can call me Apple. I’m rather fond of this nickname,” he chuckles, his raspy voice showing his age. He looks and sounds too old to be a fighter pilot, but the thought doesn’t go by Collins unnoticed—a part of him, the one that still hangs onto his honour for everyone with more experience on the battlefield than Collins, feels an ounce of respect for the pilot for having survived for so long.

It sheds a new light on their last dogfight, the way the pilot – Apple, despite how ridiculous the nickname sounds in Collins’ head – flew his Macchi and seemed to be reluctant to damage Collins’ kittyhawk too much until the Messerschmitt went down, evening out the fight. Maybe it all had been a strategy gone awry due to the inexperience of the b.109’s pilot—maybe the fact that they thought Collins had the codebook was the only reason they didn’t outright shoot him down the moment they had the chance—because thinking back to the fight, Collins realizes that it’s all been dumb luck that he survived. If not for the sandstorm, he could’ve easily gotten away from the Macchi alone, but one against two rarely did result in the outnumbered side’s victory.

“I don’t suppose your name is Farrier,” Apple continues, not bothered by the fact that Collins is still refusing to introduce himself. “A dead, hm, mate, perhaps?” Upon hearing Collins’ loud huff, Apple adds: “Disappeared, then. I know the feeling.”

“Look, _mate_ , it’s none of your business,” Collins leers, once again reassuring his grip on the pistol. It’s been slipping, his fingers growing weary with each long minute stretched towards the inevitable. “You want to join forces for the sake of—getting out of this shite, fine by me, strength in numbers and all that jazz. But I’m _not_ here to make friends.”

“I know. You’ve said that before,” says Apple simply, and it’s enough to make Collins forget his hostility, like a snap of a hypnotist. Not that Collins has ever been hypnotized. Before Collins can dig his lost control of the conversation deeper, Apple explains, with absolutely no judgment in his tone: “You were talking to yourself.”

Collins groans, combing through his hair with a hand, flinching at the pain as a reminder that his arm is still injured to some extent. “Bloody desert…”

“What’s your name, son?” Apple asks then, and it sounds too—fatherly. Too kind. If Collins’s father had ever been kind, that is.

“It’s Collins,” he says with a quiet sigh, because not answering his father had never been an option.

“Well,” Apple tips his head forward, “it’s nice to meet you, Mr. Collins.” The pistol clicks, and the fire pops quietly.

Collins hesitates before lowering his own handgun, chewing on his lip as he waits with bated breath. The moment of truth. He slowly pops the cylinder to the side, and tilts the weapon towards the light source.

“It’s empty,” Collins breathes, jerking his head up to stare at Apple. He shakes the pistol, not believing his eyes. How can it be empty? When and where had he used it before? Where did the last bullet go?

“Told you so,” Apple nods, and, as if a display of gratitude for Collins’ trust, makes a show of ridding his own handgun of the three bullets. They go into one of Apple’s pockets.

Collins buries his face into his palms, rubbing at his cheeks. His stubble scrapes the skin of his hands, and he desperately wishes for a bathtub of water—he should have used his time in Shali more carefully, but with Alex, it has always been whatever the younger man dictated. Collins hopes he will see Alex again—he should visit Tommy too when – if – he gets back to London; he will make sure of this after he’s done with Malta and the codebook.

Apple lets loose a loud yawn as though he’s been waiting all along for Collins to finally reconsider his situation and start trusting him. To Collins, it all still feels to fast, but what else can he do.

“Alright,” Collins says then, looking around, “what supplies do we have? I hope you didn’t drink all my water.” They seem to have camped at the bottom of a small dune, and upon its slope Collins can spy a dark shape of a crashed plane, its tail reaching towards the sky illuminated by the stars faintly.

“Whatever you have in your bag,” Apple gestures to the rucksack at Collins’ side. “My parachute, two handguns with three bullets, your knife, and I’ve gone through the trouble of digging out your plane. There was still some gasoline left in the tank.” He lifts Collins’ second canteen that he had accidentally poured all over himself while still buried in his plane, and it’s definitely not water sloshing inside it.

“No compass?” Collins asks, trying not to sound too hopeful.

“I had one, but I could only save my parachute. And you, before you blew it all up.”

“You will never let me live it down, won’t you?”

“Never.”

When Apple finally falls asleep, Collins allows himself to look through his bag and take stock. He unpacks everything quietly, setting them on the torn parachute one by one, organized, his back facing the other pilot.

Water canteen, three quarters full, hardly enough for two adult men to last them more than two days; an opened box of unsalted crackers courtesy of Smith, and Collins’ stomach growls loudly at the sight of it, he can’t even remember the last time he’s eaten; two lighters, still intact; a crushed packet of six fags; a broken pencil, dull; his folded map full of information of his routes; the metal container that holds a few cartridges for his late kittyhawk’s engine; his shaving kit is gone—of that, the culprit must have been Alex when he’d woken up before Collins. The dust jacket of _The Odyssey of Homer_ hides the codebook, while the epic itself is gone too, no doubt also kidnapped by Alex’s greedy hands. Collins swears on the book to strangle Alex if there’s even a tear on the pages of Farrier’s _Odyssey_. The RAF manual is gone as well, but the remainder of its burnt pages Collins can easily spot in the fire among two bunched balls of parachute material doused in gasoline.

Apple certainly seems to have more experience surviving the desert than Collins. The thought does ease him a bit, until he’s reminded that Apple is the enemy.

Collins barely sleeps, if any, a restless nap that he wakes up from with a quiet gasp at the first crack of dawn. Apple snores loudly, oblivious to the world around him, the chute wrapped around him in a warm cocoon. Collins takes a few minutes to collect his thoughts and replay everything that has happened to him in the past twenty-four hours, still too bleary to fully grasp it. He takes a small sip from his water and swishes it around his mouth before swallowing, wondering if it really was a good idea to let Apple live. Honour is one thing, but honour Collins cannot drink; it’s water, and he will have to share it with the enemy.

Standing on the top of the dune, he watches the sun rise over the horizon, noting its exact location, and returns to the camp to lay out his map. Knowing where east lies is one thing, but come a sandstorm and they will easily veer off-course without a compass, nor does Collins know their exact location. He was headed north-west after Shali, and he couldn’t have been in air for more than twenty or so minutes before finding himself in a sandstorm with Apple’s Macchi in his heels, but it is still a mystery as to where they ended up.

“You make me so proud,” comes Farrier’s voice with a gust of wind, blowing sand all over Collins’ map. He dusts it off diligently, and ignores Farrier—he’s not real. He’s _not_ real, just a desperate attempt by his own mind to hold onto something familiar in this unknown land where Collins has found himself. “Oi, c’mon, stop moping around. I saved your arse.”

“You nearly gotten me killed,” Collins hisses, jerking his head up to leer at Farrier, but his friend is nowhere to be seen. He tries to focus on the map alone and the task of plotting their course with what little information he’s got, but Farrier doesn’t leave him alone. He crouches down, shadowing much of the map.

“You only have yourself to blame,” Farrier shrugs, elbows braced on his knees in a much too leisurely position. “You still don’t understand the folks.”

“I don’t need to understand people,” Collins scowls, dragging the dull tip of his pencil across the map. He’s managed to narrow down their approximate location, but the circle is still at least a hundred miles in diameter, and he doubts – much to his dismay – they will actually find their way back to Shali. They can head back south-west all they want, but chances are they are just going to pass it – or any other oases and settlements – by a large margin.

They wouldn’t be the first ones to meet their demise in the Sahara due to miscalculation and the lies of the desert, and certainly not the last ones, but Collins supposes if they are smart about this whole thing, they might get out of here alive. Or so he hopes.

“You know you won’t give up on me,” Farrier says then, and Collins sighs. When he looks up, his friend is gone, but the sound of splashing water hits his ears, and notices Apple turn around while buckling his belt back around his waist. He kicks at the ashen debris of their campfire, but the parachute parts have burned beyond reigniting. It still releases a continuous tower of grey smoke, but it’s hardly big enough for anyone to notice it.

Upon the raise of an eyebrow from the old man, Collins picks up the map and stands, feeling strange not to see the enemy wearing a Swastika.

“I think we’re ‘round here,” he follows the clumsily drawn circle with the tip of his finger the moment Apple steps next to him, distance between them guarded. Trust is still just something they both want to happen for the sake of survival, but half a day is hardly enough to place your life in the hands of the enemy.

“If we decide to head for the Mediterranean Sea, it is still a three hundred kilometre walk,” Apple says, “and oases and wells are few and far between due north.” He then drags a fingertip around the shape of an upside-down _‘U’_. “To our South should be the Libyan desert and the Great Sand Sea.”

“That sounds exactly like a place where we are not going,” Collins notes. His small map contains only most of Egypt and Libya, but during his time in the DAF, he was mostly stationed either in the westernmost reaches of Africa, or in Egypt, along the Nile, south and north, west or east side, wherever he was needed; rarely did he have the reason to examine other parts of North Africa like Libya.

“You’re in luck, Mr. Collins, to have me as your companion!” Apple exclaims suddenly, clapping Collins in the back with a strong hand. Collins folds his map back.

“And why, pray tell, am I lucky?” he asks, not bothering to hide his sarcasm. Apple, as if revitalized by something Collins still can’t comprehend, makes quick work on the parachute bed, rolling it up expertly.

“I happen to be a lover of deserts,” he announces, and uses the chute’s cords to tie it around his chest as a makeshift strap. “I’ve spent long years exploring the secrets of Southern Egypt—given I had the help of automobiles, but nonetheless I know the hardships of which the desert will no doubt throw our way.”

“Oh bloody hell,” Collins groans, turning his face towards the brightening sky in a silent prayer. He watches, just a hair’s breadth from stopping Apple, as the pilot grabs his water canister and takes a shallow gulp. “That’s hardly going to last us enough.”

“Well, let us hope we run into a caravan or oasis, then,” Apple says, handing the canteen back. Collins sloshes it around, but it’s still three quarters full. A small mercy.

“That’s it?” he asks, incredulous. “On all your _explorations_ you’ve hoped to run into a caravan or oasis?”

“Of course not,” Apple laughs, and Collins is starting to think that the old man is already delirious. “But on my trips in the desert, I’ve always been aware of my location. If we don’t find our exact location, no matter which way we head, we’ll die of thirst sooner or later. Nor can we rely on the position of sun and the direction of wind alone to find our way.”

Collins bites down on his lower lip to stop himself from yelling in frustration. “Then—” he says slowly, “what do you suggest we do? Stay here, and hope to be rescued? There are no air routes around here.”

The DAF will certainly not send anyone to rescue Collins—whether by lack of resources that seem to haunt not only the DAF but other Allied regimens, or by the complete lack of his importance, codebook or not, if it was so important to them, they wouldn’t have sent a single pilot to play courier. He’s not sure about the speed of communication between Aswan and Luqa, but seeing as how Collins was supposed to reach Malta in the morning yesterday, it’s safe to say that they most probably suspect something must have happened.

Before Collins can even begin to consider the risks of staying around and waiting for a rescue that might never come, Apple takes the map without warning and jogs up the slope of the dune, patches of sand caving in under his steps as he swiftly makes his way up to the top near where Collins’ kittyhawk lies buried. The different way the older man walks the sand is, perhaps, the loudest proof of his claims of knowing the desert.

Collins lets out a huff and crouches down to get his stuff, chute part rolled up and strapped to the small of his back in a similar fashion to how Apple did, and backpack slung over one shoulder. Before he makes his way after Apple who’s examining the map and the view in front of him, Collins takes a look at his bandaged arm, wondering if he should check on it—wouldn’t it be funny to not die of dehydration in the desert but of a nasty infection?

In the end he decides to unwrap the yellowed bandage to see what Apple has done to it while Collins was out cold. The gash is still raw and fibres of the textile stick to the smooth edges as he carefully peels it off. It looks to have been cleaned with only water, but at least it doesn’t smell infecte. The centre of the injury looks torn anew, though not bleeding fortunately, so Collins wraps his wound back, and promises himself not to strain his injured arm more than absolutely needed—it definitely did not appreciate last night’s events.

“I wish I had a sextant,” Apple murmurs to himself as Collins reaches him on the peak. Behind them, the sun rises white and blinding, warming their backs already. The sky is clear where the eye can see, and the wind is calm, though it’s hardly a warrant of a day without any obstacles. “Can’t do much with this map.”

“Can you work your—exploration ‘magic’ without one?” Collins asks, waving his hand around. Looking at the same dunes as yesterday, he feels just as lost as he was when he first climbed out of his crashed plane, still not a step closer to salvation.

“Sure,” Apple drawls, “let me just hocus-pocus abracadabra our way out of the desert.” Collins lets out a snort that’s not entirely serious. While Apple turns around on his heels, glancing up at the landscape before going back to the map as if he was going to find their exact location by the shape of a particular dune, Collins thrusts a wet finger into the air, feeling around for the slightest breeze. Especially wind directions have been drilled into his head upon his arrival to Africa, and he could recite the names of each wind and storm type in a variety of languages by now.

Fat lot of good this knowledge does him in this situation.

When Apple slaps the map closed and hands it over, Collins lifts both his eyebrows. “So?”

“I say we head north-west,” Apple announces, turning around a bit before finding the general direction. “Benghazi is our best bet. For the both of us. We just have to keep the Sun behind us. At night the North Star shall show us the way.”

The idea of staying put and burning the rest of the chute for the smoke to signal his location becomes more and more appealing. For obvious reasons, Collins cannot tell Apple why the DAF would go out their way to send a rescue team after a single pilot without giving away, if not his whole mission, but at the least the codebook’s presence in Collins’ possession. It is by blind luck that Apple doesn’t suspect Collins despite the clear signs: it’s fact that the old man knows the codebook was in Shali for some time as he’d been sent there to retrieve it, and Collins’ sudden appearance there was anything but trustworthy.

There is no way Apple doesn’t suspect anything—but as long as they don’t suddenly try to kill each other again, their momentary alliance is necessary.

“We should head back to Shali. It’s the closest oasis to us,” Collins suggests. The only Allied presence at Siwa Oasis is the nearby airfield, and Apple could easily send message to his side of his location to go back to wherever he’s come from.

“That’s Allied territory,” Apple objects. “They will not come for me there.”

“It is still the closest source of water,” Collins argues. He combs through his hair in frustration.

“Have you under your belt a couple _thousand_ kilometres travelled in North Africa? Have _you_ charted areas of the Sahara that were nothing but white spots on the map before your expedition?” Collins opens his mouth to say _no, of course not_ , but Apple beats him to it. “Of course not. But _I_ have crossed unmapped areas before you were even born, kid, and if I say we should head north-west, then we better head north-west.”

Collins’ face twists into a frown at the realisation that the other pilot is right. He’s travelled the desert as well, but not on ground, and up above sitting inside a plane rarely did he have to worry about dangers such as dehydration.

But experience or not, Apple has no right to speak so condescendingly to him. “You had your _automobiles_ and an ensemble of water, food and gasoline supplies. We have none!”

Apple balls a hand into fists, and shakes it in the air in clear sign of his frustration. “If only you didn’t blow up my aeroplane!”

“Well, pardon me!” Collins shoots back, feeling strangely childish to be arguing with the enemy while stuck in the middle of the desert. He should add this to his tale he will recite to the others when he gets back to London—given they will be still alive. Collins means his mates, not himself. He _will_ get out of this alive.

If Farrier was here, he would reprimand Collins, but he’s not here, so fuck Farrier and his utterly ridiculous pacifism in times of war.

In the end, Apple comes out as the victor, despite Collins resorting to threats of leaving Apple without food and water if they didn’t head for Shali, a plan that sounded plausible in Collins’ head, but then again, he couldn’t ignore the other pilot’s vastly more experience in traversing the desert. Apple’s sense of direction was remarkable from the first moment.

They walk putting minimal energy into their steps, eating half a cracker each and taking small sips every few hours until the temperature rises to unbearable heights just after noon, so hot that even their miniscule shadows seem like they are melting away. On Apple’s suggestion, they make shade with his twice as big chute part, though it does little to protect them from the heat.

“Shite,” Collins curses as he shifts around, the chute starting to scorch his back through his shirt. He’s already exhausted, and it hurts to just breathe the arid air through his nose. His wound has also started to itch, the salt of his perspiration causing an uneasy sting underneath the bandage. He rubs at the itching part carefully, trying to ease it without tearing his wound open.

“What cut you?” Apple asks, breathing heavily through his mouth. Collins has started to feel bad for the old man, the difficulties of trek in such conditions wearing down on him far quicker than a young man like Collins. It’s still a mystery to him how such an old man Germany allows to fly, at the age of past forty, maybe even fifty, vital reaction time slowing and body physique deteriorating past the advantages of pure experience—even if not deployed into active fights but as a courier or scout, to Collins, it makes little sense.

He, truly, is lucky, isn’t he?

“The canopy when I tried to climb out.”

“Good,” Apple nods wisely. “Infection is less probable. You should pour some water over it and let it air out a bit.”

“And waste the water?” Collins asks back, somewhat confused. Water is their priority. Hopefully his injury will not get infected. The same cannot be done with water—they cannot hope the water will not run out, because it will, no doubt sooner than they will expect.

“If it gets infected, you’ll die faster than from dehydration,” Apple says. Collins sighs, and complies, no strength left in him to argue with Apple’s logic. Collins has found that it’s easier to just agree with whatever Apple says—his faith in Apple’s experience saving them is the only thing still keeping Collins hopeful of their escape.

After some time, with the bandage back around Collins’ arm and the chute rolled up, they set out once again. They walk in a straight line, dunes scalable without having to change directions to go up their spines, though the climbing takes a lot of energy.

It’s difficult, nothing like Collins would have imagined, though the daily training at the airfields where he was stationed has kept his body in top shape at all times—however, the same cannot be said about Apple, who pretty much crumbles to the now solid ground after a few hours later they’ve cleared the _zerir_ – Arabian for bed, Apple has explained, as the Bedouins call rock-less sand deserts for there is no need to choose a designated spot for a cot to lay down. _The entire desert is your bed._

There are brown-golden outcroppings and orange-yellow rocks dotting the landscape, making the ground more uneven, but the larger formations offer blissful shades under which the heat is not just bearable, but a welcome friend. Collins has sweated out all the water his body contained, feeling like a wrung-out rag—despite the desire to chug down the rest of their drinking water, they both resist the primordial call.

Apple draws an arrow facing north-west into the ground with a rock.

“We’ll continue after nightfall,” he says, sitting down on the flat surface of a cool rock, and follows Collins’ example of taking off his dirty shirt stained of his sweat.

Collins busies himself with fishing out the box of crackers, trying to shove the codebook to the bottom of the bag, and takes a glance at Apple, still an attempt to figure out his age—the tan of his clearly European skin tells the tale of years spent under the blazing sun of the Sahara, now the folds of his stomach as he sits sag. On his side facing Collins there are burn marks, skin red and shiny, stretching unnaturally. Collins only spies a few other scars, before Apple reaches a hand towards him, wriggling his fingers in a request for a cracker.

At least the cracker is not salted.

While Apple works the pencil around their map—wait, no, it’s Collins’ map—Collins counts the amount of crackers they have, chest tightening at the end result: fifteen more pieces. Depending on the terrain, the weather and their energy consumption, it won’t last them more than two days. Their water might run out even sooner, despite rationing it.

To say that their situation is dire would be an understatement.

They try to rest in the slowly crawling shade without much talk to conserve their energy, and when the Sun has submerged under the rippling horizon, they head in the direction of the arrow Apple has drawn, keeping the last sunrays that paint the sky with pink and violet to their ten. Collins decides to help out Apple by exchanging the chute rolls so the old man doesn’t have to carry the heavier one, shrugging nonchalantly at Apple’s questioning looks.

When the sky turns completely dark, and the myriad of stars coats everything, the other pilot stops to examine the stars. Even without the moon there is enough illumination for Collins to see Apple’s shape, and the terrain not to break his ankle. It’s like the stars shine brighter just for them.

Apple uses one of Collins’ lighters to look at the map in the darkness as he crouches down. “Look for Polaris, will you?”

Collins turns around, head tilted up as he searches for a familiar constellation among the innumerable stars. The sight used to be alien to him and near overwhelming at the beginning when he first arrived to Africa – an outpost far enough from Marrakech that the city’s lights didn’t pollute –, but as he kept spending hours on end outside gazing at the stars, he’s learned his way around the formations. Soon enough he spots the corner of the Big Dipper, and after that, finding the North Star is a piece of cake.

“There,” Collins points out with a stretched arm. Apple follows the direction with his eyes, and he finds the star quickly. Then he does something – Collins can barely see as he holds the lighter – with his arm, stretching it out towards the North Star with his hand fisted. After a few seconds, he stretches his fingers, folding his wrist with his palm facing him, and then three of his fingers so that the distance between his thumb and little finger set against the sky tells Apple something Collins doesn’t get.

“Hm, our latitude should be approximately thirty degrees north,” Apple announces after a few minutes of glancing between the sky and his fist, and steps next to Collins – this time, their shoulders collide – with the map held in one hand. He taps a finger on Shali. “Siwa Oasis is twenty-nine degrees and twelve minutes north. Now, if you hadn’t skipped Sunday school, you would know that one minute is roughly one point eight kilometres, which means—”

“We should be eighty-nine kilometres north of Shali,” Collins does the quick math. That’s about fifty-five miles. He looks at the map, examining Apple’s incoherent markings. It offers him no help. “But how far west of Shali are we?”

“Well,” Apple says, “that’s why I wish I had a sextant.”

Collins sighs deeply. The silence that follows his voice is—unnerving. Never has he been forced to spend a night in the open desert. Even the most remote airfields he’d been stationed at were loud at night compared to this. Not a scrape of boots of a guard on night shift, nor the distant call of a nocturnal animal. The desert is silent as if it was frozen solid, waiting for either of them to say something.

Apple’s presence seems to have driven away Farrier. For most part, Collins is grateful for it. Now that he’s not grilling his guts in a cockpit twice as hot as it usually gets outside at noon, he’s perfectly fine, no signs of heatstroke at all—and he knows that’s when Farrier usually pops up.

Farrier is like Fata Morgana, in the far distance where the rippling heat of the horizon turns into a sky-coloured lake, changing shapes each second without waiting for its audience to properly register it. Sometimes Collins pretends that he’s there, in the middle of the mirage, and he’s observing himself in some sort of transcendent way—and he knows this Farrier is just a fragment of his mind, possessing the mixture of what he can remember and his own personality, thoughts and opinions, but longing to see him for over three years has left Collins so, _so_ desperate that he’s made a deal with himself to let this fake-Farrier do whatever it wants.

So when Farrier’s face appears out of nowhere, drenched in the orange-redness of the small fire Apple has made from a ball of his chute—well, Collins doesn’t say anything. But the way he keeps glancing Farrier’s way doesn’t pass by Apple’s sharp eyes.

“What’s over there?” Apple asks, narrowing his eyes. They’ve just finished their _dinner_ , though the word itself would weep if it knew it was used to describe the dining of two pieces of cracker.

 _Nothing_ , wants Collins to say, but Apple strikes him as a person who is too wise to be fooled like that—however, Collins knows better than to tell himself that Apple would really care about him and his problems. They can pretend to tolerate each other all they want, but it all boils down to survival instinct. It’s just means to an end. And the conversations between them—nothing more than to take their minds off the thought of dying.

“Has the desert ever played tricks on you?” starts Collins slowly, threading his words in a careful order. “Not the heat, but—the desert.”

Farrier’s grin is crooked. When Collins looks at him, he doesn’t look like Farrier anymore, even though he _knows_ it’s his best friend, his good old, lovely best mate who Collins would walk to the edge of the world to see once more.

Nazi-occupied territory not included in the friendship package.

As Collins has not had the opportunity to shave for a few days now, so is Farrier’s stubble more prominent now. It’s strangely not something he’s seen on Farrier due to regulations, and never had they more than two days of vacation—even then Farrier would shave. It’s just—strange. Like a nightly mirage.

“More times than I can count,” Apple says solemnly, tilting his head in a slight nod. “I used to believe the Sahara had a personal vendetta against me. It has deceived my eyes so many times for revealing its secrets,” he begins, and turns towards Collins fully as if he was about to tell Collins a bed-time story. He doesn’t stop him. “You cannot believe the wonders I have seen hidden deep within Sahara’s belly.”

For a moment, Collins wishes he could connect with Apple’s enthusiasm over the desert, but to him, the sands are nothing but an impassable obstacle he needs to overcome. Nothing, but a noose slowly tightening around his neck the longer he remains here.

“You see, just ten years ago, I led a number of expeditions into the Libyan desert—for the rapture of—of seeing it, _this_ , beauty with my own eyes,” Apple explains, his face glowing up with palpable excitement. That, Collins can relate to—he’d used to talk about flying with the same eagerness, of conquering the skies. “I used to not care about being first, but there is a certain _gyönyör_ —hmm, pleasure in setting foot where no one else has before. It’s—it’s like flying for the first time, again and again.”

Collins finds himself nodding, hanging off of Apple’s every word. It’s too good of a distraction. This is a man who has lived his life the way he wanted, and did not let anything get in his way to achieve his dreams—not even the biggest, bloody war on the world.

This is a man who inspires awe and respect. If only they’d met in different circumstances.

“That the reason you’re here?” Collins asks, wringing his hands absentmindedly. His knuckles pop, as if it was firewood crackling. They could use real timber for a real campfire, the small flame of the burning chute giving hardly enough heat in the cold night. “No offense mate, but you look like you could be my father. Britain wouldn’t let old men like you fly.”

Apple lets out a genuine laugh, bopping his head up and down. “Yes, that’s true. I’m old indeed. I’ve fought in the previous war too, young and reckless as I had been, but I was one of the best pilots out of the Monarchy.”

Damn. Apple must have been at least a couple years younger than Collins is now when he became a pilot to fight.

“No way!” Farrier exclaims, earning a quick, scolding glance from Collins. “I was, what, a wee kid then—no, even younger.”

Collins ignores him. He resists the urge to ask more, not wanting to appear too—thirsty for knowledge, for information on this old pilot fighting for the enemy. He tries to assure himself that all this is to gain leverage against Apple should he turn on Collins, but he can’t quieten the voice that says it’s allowed to be curious.

All was easier when he didn’t know the name and face of his enemy.

Now—Collins is not sure if he would have the—courage to pull the trigger. Not anymore.

“And what happened?” Collins asks quietly then. He supposes, let the old man talk about himself. It’s not going to hurt anyone, and Collins just—he just wants to not feel at edge for once. He wants to pool what little trust he’s got left into this uncanny alliance.

Apple leans forward, prepared to spring into a long tale. “I planned on staying in Egypt for the rest of my life and work with the local cartographers or driving rich folk around the sand, but then, as you know, the war broke out, and my country joined Germany in hopes of regaining territories lost after the first war. It’s—all politics.”

Collins wrecks his mind for notes on history of the Eastern-European country, but he would be lying if he said he knew everything. Other, more recent and more important information have pushed this type of knowledge into the dark recesses of his mind.

“Aye, it’s all politics, innit,” Collins scoffs, leaning against a rock behind him. He hopes a scorpion won’t crawl on him.

“My country needed me, and I was happy to fight for her—just like you fight for yours.” Collins nods. They are all just soldiers, aren’t they? It’s a thought that Collins has found easier to simple ignore in its entirety. “At first, I wasn’t allowed to fly, thus I became an instructor—but I felt that I was running out of time. I wanted to return and see my beloved desert one last time.”

“So you managed to join the Italians in their North African campaign to come here?” It’s toned more of a statement than a question, but still Collins raises an eyebrow.

Apple nods. “And what is your story, Mr. Collins?”

Collins chuckles, stretching his arms. Sleepiness crawls up him slowly. “I’m afraid my story is a lot less grandiose. It was out of—necessity, so to say.”

 _No, actually, my best mate slash lover who is actually a fellow pilot_ and _a man was killed in Dunkirk, but I refuse to accept his death, so to get far away, I volunteered to join the DAF._

“Oh, what a romantic lad,” Farrier drawls, perched on the other side of their small camp, back towards the endless desert. “My heart bleeds for you, Collins.”

Collins bites down on his lip to stop himself from yelling at Farrier.

“I’m just a bloke doing me part in the war,” he spreads his arms.

“Aren’t we all?” Apple notes, and waves a hand when Collins offers him a cigarette. “I’m good, thank you.”

Collins shrugs. At least this one thing he doesn’t have to share. He lights one with his own lighter, Smith’s own resting in one of the pockets of the bag. Collins has promised himself to only use Smith’s in emergency—like burning the face off a Nazi kind of emergency, so Collins hopes he will never have to use Smith’s lighter.

“Can I have a cracker?”

“No.”

The conversation between them is laid to rest, and the desert takes over with its ambiguous quietness. Apple asks for Collins’ knife and cuts another stripe off his chute roll, bunches it up and pours some gasoline on it before tossing it into the fire. In two nights’ time, they won’t have any chute left—hopefully, that won’t come to pass. Collins’ torn uniform is hardly enough to keep him warm in the cold nights.

Collins hates the Sahara. He hates the heat, the sand, the way he’s sweating his arse off from dawn till dusk, and the way the horizon is never there where it should be, and fuck the mirages. He hates what the desert has made him into, he hates what the desert has made Farrier into—these _twisted_ shells filled to the brim with nothing but sand and dust.

Where Apple sees miracle in the desert, Collins sees death and lies.

“Why would anyone return?” Collins lets slip in a moment of weak-mindedness, after Farrier’s gone, and his shadow is the same shape as a rock’s near the fire casting a long stretch of blackness onto the ground.

“What?” Apple looks up blearily, lifting his head off the pillow of his crossed arms. He was probably about to fall asleep when Collins spoke.

“Why would anyone in their right mind come back?”

It takes a few beats for Apple to comprehend Collins’ question, and for a few more he assesses the genuine expression on Collins’ face. He then pushes himself up into sitting position.

“I can only answer by a Bedouin proverb—” Apple starts, looking away into the distance with a gentle smile on his face, “ _’The desert is dreadful and unforgiving, but return must he who has ever come to know it.’_ ”

Collins, too, longs for something outside his reach.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i will only disclose the identity of this great person in the last chapter for reasons.


End file.
